Welcome to Star Wolf
by The White Wolf13
Summary: After being forced out of Star fox, Krystal goes in search of the Star Fox team's most bitter rivals in order to continue her career as a fighter pilot. Rated M for violence, language, and some adult themes.
1. The times they are a changin

Authors Note: I typed this up after watching Watchmen again and then realizing that it works almost perfectly as a Star Fox intro as well. The point is to read it while the intro scene of Watchmen plays in the background. this can be accomplished by opening a new window, going to youtube, searching "Watchmen intro", and clicking on it. Let it load fully to avoid hiccups. Hit play, switch tabs, and read away. It's written to match up fairly well at most parts, I had to change some to make it work but some of the effects, ie. the fighters flying overhead, should match up if you read at, what I think is, an average pace.

It essentially just covers the events of the Star Fox universe roughly up to the point that the first chapter kicks in, that being said this is essentially optional. You can skip it if you really want, but there are some small details covered in it that are my own assumption on uncovered Star Fox events.

Disclaimer : I don't own Star Fox, someone else does, take it up with him, nor do I own Watchmen, but don't take it up with those guys 'cause David Hayter was involved, and he'll put the hurt on you for real!

Please enjoy!

* * *

The scene fades in to reveal hero of the Lylat system, James McCloud, punching the face of a notorious Pirate boss on the planet Macbeth.

While his crew watches, the pirate's blaster discharges a bolt harmlessly into the ceiling of the building the fight is taking place in.

*Fade*

Peppy Hare of Star Fox stands with Cornerian Defense Force troopers on the steps of the Cornerian Capitol Building.

On the electronic banner behind them the sentence "Star Fox and CDF bust local Drug ring" scrolls by.

*Fade*

Pigma stands and chews on a cigar while holding a recently caught interplanetary bank robber in his large arms.

The large pig's muscles bulge as the robber tries in vain to escape his meaty hands.

*Fade*

The three members of the original Star Fox Team stand in front of a white banner emblazoned with the team logo of a winged fox.

Pigma fusses with his boots and Peppy awkwardly attempts to make sure his flight jacket is hanging straight.

James adopts his cocky, signature smile as the other members stand and smile for the picture being taken.

*Fade*

A massive holo-screen in a Cornerian plaza reports news to the citizens lounging outside.

The news covered the recent finalization of a project by Dr. Andross to create a new, clean, and renewable energy.

"The future is here!" the ticker on the bottom of the screen exclaimed.

*Fade*

Hundreds of Cornerians throw confetti and streamers in joy as another holo-screen reports that Star Fox had successfully cleared the Sargasso Region of all known pirates.

Shipping lanes in the Cornerian Republic of Planets are now clear of nearly all obstacles thanks to Star Fox. The citizens of Corneria gratefully show their support.

*Fade*

James and a beautiful vixen sit in a Cornerian park.

The woman's name is Vixy and she is clearly several months pregnant. James's eyes, although covered by sunglasses, are clearly locked on Vixy's extended stomach, small smiles grace their faces.

*Fade*

The Star Fox crew as well as personal friends occupy the McCloud dining room.

Vixy cradles a young fox cub. He resembles his father and James exudes a sense of pride. The guest of the baby shower congratulate the young couple. A camera flashes from the back of the room

*Fade*

A once sporty sky car sits burning in the McCloud driveway, it is nothing more than a twisted, flaming wreck.

Not twenty feet from the car, a CDF officer tries to console a distraught young cub who, as he played in the yard, watched his mother enter the car, only to vaporize seconds later.

*Fade*

A courtroom full of people glare with contempt at a man they all once respected as a hero in his own right.

Dr. Andross, once a great scientist who promoted Cornerian prosperity through his research, is sentenced to exile to the planet Venom.

An experiment of his had exploded, leveling an entire sector of the Cornerian capitol.

*Fade*

A man sits on a bench in a narrow hallway, his holo-pad displays a news story stating that Andross had claimed Venom as his own personal planet and the birthplace of a new empire.

An angry looking wolf pup stood glaring at him from the other side of the hallway. The door opens, a man steps out, and a scantily clad wolfess beckons the man on the bench to her bedroom.

The man who just exited the room tries to rub the young wolf's head as he walks by, only to have his finger nearly taken off by the pup's sharp teeth.

*Fade*

The president of the Republic of Corneria stands outside of the presidential mansion in the act of shaking hands with a short, plump frog.

The man is Beltino Toad, who had just accepted the prestigious position as the head of the CDF's R&D department. Beltino would now be the man responsible for the Cornerian Army's killing power.

*Fade*

James McCloud dies a slow and painful death at the hands of Andross after a failed recon mission to Venom by Star Fox.

Pigma had turned his teammates over for a large sum of gold. Fortunately James had met a young Wolf in the employment of Andross, who grew up admiring the adventures of Star Fox. The night before his death James informed the young wolf that if he had any respect left for Star Fox or James himself, he'd help Peppy escape and go back to his family.

The young wolf, although bitter, smirked and nodded.

*Fade*

Several apes sit burning to death, calmly, in front of the Cornerian Congressional Hall.

They sat down and ignited their fur together in a graphic protest over the speciest laws of the Cornerian Republic. The laws do not explicitly grant apes the same rights as non-apes and are often exploited for grave injustices.

*Fade*

A congressional front-runner in his district and his aide lay dead in the campaign office of the hopeful politician.

The ram had run in his conservative, merchant-heavy, district on a platform of continuing the speciest laws currently in effect. Both men hat been brutalized by a very sharp set of claws. The deep wounds forensically match wolf claws and all apes are ruled out as suspects.

No Leads are discovered by the CDF.

*Fade*

Emperor Andross stands on a platform with his top military brass overlooking a military parade in Venoms honor.

Tanks and other heavy military vehicles roll by as the troops salute their emperor. Andross turns his orange eyes skyward as a wing of fighters make a flyby over the parade.

*Fade*

Two massive capitol ships trade fire with each other, one is Cornerian, the other, Venomian.

The Lylat Wars are in full swing as both Star Fox and Star Wolf try to leave their respective marks on the war.

*Fade*

The fame of Star Fox has returned following their victories in the Lylat wars.

Andross is dead and the Venomian Empire has mostly disbanded. Star Fox's fame is near the levels of James McCloud's prime.

*Fade*

Aparoids individually fall apart by their cells as they are in the middle of their invasion.

Star Fox and Star Wolf had just cooperated to deliver a devastating strike on the Aparoid queen. With that, the second threat to Corneria of Fox's life is over.

*Fade*

Members of both the Star Fox and Star Wolf teams sit in the Great Fox's lounge.

The two teams had again teamed up to rid the galaxy of the Anglars, fish people from Venom's toxic lakes. Despite obvious tension, the two teams are getting along fairly well. Fox and Wolf enjoy cigars in the corner as the rest of their team members play cards at the lounge table.

*Fade*

After the Anglars, being the third major threat to Corneria in Fox's short life, the galaxy seems like a very dangerous place for a fighter pilot.

Fox, although having good intentions, loses his temper with his blue-furred lover, Krystal, over her future as a pilot. Fox fires her from Star Fox in a fit of stress induced fury and a heartbroken Krystal leaves the Great Fox II with her belongings when the ship docks at Corneria.

*Fade*

A pile of Star Fox merchandise burns in a Cornerian park.

Protestors around the bonfire of t-shirts, posters, and toys are rallying against the obvious reliance of the Cornerian Military on small, private groups such as Star Fox. The citizens are worried that the army, which they pay for, has become incapable of performing its own duties.

*Fade*

In the near abandoned bridge of the Great Fox II, a lonely Fox McCloud sits in the captains chair and watches the Holo-screen in front of him.

The only other occupant of the bridge and, in fact , the whole ship is ROB, Star Fox's robot.

Across the bottom of the news program on the screen, the ticker kicks out "Star Fox disbands, all members have left the group except for team leader, Fox McCloud. This ends the once great group for a second time."

The video feed shows more anti-mercenary protesters causing mayhem and havoc in the Cornerian capitol. A man in a hooded shirt proceeds to throw a crude fire bomb at the CDF riot troops who are attempting to keep the peace.

*Fade*

* * *

I do hope you played along and enjoyed this thing I did.

Oh, and I try to read through this stuff carefully a few times before I go about posting it but 1: I miss stuff and 2: My Advanced Composition class was over a year ago now and all that it has taught me has seeped into my pilows. So if you notice a recurring mistake in my writing, please feel free to drop me a message and scold me for not paying more attention in class.


	2. Pancakes and sneaking

Author's Note: This is the real first chapter of the story, the other was the prologue. A preemptive apology for all of the talking in the first half of this chapter. I do hope you can enjoy it and push all the way through, I personally think that it gets better as it goes.

* * *

Krystal storms into her room onboard the Great Fox II, tears streaming down her face. She roughly wipes them away with the back of her paw as she begins throwing her few belongings into an old ammunition bag she found laying in the hallway between the dining room and her quarters.

"Why?" She asked no one in particular. "Why would he throw me away? Why can't he see?" Her mind was so blinded with rage and helplessness that she couldn't even think straight.

Having grabbed all of her clothes and other essentials she turned to the pictures that were displayed in silver frames on her dresser. They all had Fox in them and she was about to leave them all before one in the back caught her eye. The picture was coated in a light layer of dust but it was one of Krystal's favorites. It showed the Star Fox team in its entirety as they ate ice cream in celebration after their first successful mission with Krystal as a member. They were all laughing at Peppy who was cross-eyed trying to see the ice cream that rested on the tip of his nose.

"Well, I guess I could hold onto one," she muttered to herself "but for the team, not you," she glared at the fox in the picture laughing with the rest of them.

"Sometimes it's best to hold onto parts of the past, even if some of the pieces are painful." The speaker had wrapped their arms around Krystal in a comforting hug as they spoke.

Krystal didn't need two guesses as to who the other person in her room was, the distinct smell of fresh cabbage made its way to her sensitive nose.

"Hey Peppy," Krystal sighed in relief. Peppy was probably the one person she could stand right now.

"Let's sit for a little bit." The old rabbit, and honorary grandpa to the team, guided Krystal to her bed where they sat side by side.

"How do you do it Peppy," Krystal asked quietly

"Hm?"

"You lost everything when Pigma turned you and James over to Andross. You were tortured and James was killed. Then you get back and even though everything you had gone through earned you the respect of Corneria you didn't quit. You got right back to business and guided Fox into the Cornerian Flight Academy. Then your wife leaves you. Now I can see that Fox reminds you too much of James and it tears you up inside when you think on it too long. How do you keep going?"

"If anyone is aware of Peppy Hare's hardships it's me young lady," the old hare responded quietly.

"Sorry if I went a little far there," Krystal apologized quickly

"No, dear, it's alright, it's alright," he reassured her. "The truth is that sometimes it feels unbearable, going through life with that much baggage, but the key is to find your niche and stick to it."

"My niche?"

"Yes, it's like your calling, something that you know in your heart is just what you were born to do. I was born to help people, so that's what I do. I helped James with the original Star fox, I helped fox when he was young, I help Fox now, and later I'll help someone else. Others might feel that their niche is killing, so they join the army or turn to crime, career soldiers or hit men. Do you know what yours is?"

"I guess it would be flying," Krystal responded, "it's always been the one thing that made me feel like I was untouchable, free and happy in the clouds."

"flying calls to a lot of us ground dwellers to the sky, although with the way you describe it, you might have flight's talons in you a bit more than most," The hare chuckled, "so if flying is what you want to do, then fly you must."

"But how," questioned Krystal, "I can't afford a fighter of my own, being on this team made it all possible for me."

"There are other freelance fighter teams in the galaxy."

"Like who, Star Wolf?" Krystal shot back

"They're an option," Peppy concluded, "I hear they might be looking to fill the remaining hole in their roster."

"I thought Wolf and his boys were evil."

"Evil is just a point of view," Peppy reminded the young vixen, "Star Wolf did play an integral part in our last two battles. They do their job, just as we do ours. The only reason they rack up bounties on their head is that they don't work for Corneria due to their past with Venom. We kill pirates for Corneria, Star Wolf kills pirates for other Pirates, then we kill those pirates. All in all, we both do the same job. People change, the galaxy changes, and besides that, what you see is not necessarily what you get. "

"They had their own reasons for doing those jobs with us," Krystal reminded him, "and it sounds like there might be a hidden meaning in your lesson."

"Is Fox nearby?"

Krystal closed her eyes focusing on the auras of the people on board the ship. Fox's raging red aura stuck out like a sore thumb.

"He's in the lounge on the other end of the ship," she assured him

"I never told anybody this, I didn't even put it in my mission report after the failed Venom mission. A day after we were captured by the Venomian military, I heard a voice dismiss the guards who were stationed outside of James' door. Through the bars of my cell I could barely make out that they were talking, but about what, I couldn't tell. I would have looked but I was handcuffed to my bed at the time. The voice talked to James every day. Then they took James to Andross' chambers. I heard James yell his last words down the hallway, he told me goodbye and that I should tell Fox that he was loved," Peppy had started to tear up as he relived the worst time of his life "A few minutes later the gruff voice that had talked to James all those days dismissed the guards outside of my cell. Instead of talking to me through the bars though, he opened the cell. It was a young Wolf O'Donnell. He put a security key-card, blaster, and James' Sunglasses in my hand and pointed towards the base hanger. He gave me my life back and has let me keep it several times since then. Whenever we got in a dogfight with Star Wolf, O'Donnell has never fired a shot into my fighter." Peppy finished his story with and choked down some spit. "The point, I guess, is that people wear a shell that they want people to see and the real person under it might be completely different."

Krystal sat silently, contemplating the great Peppy Hare's confession.

"Why did you never tell Fox, knowing that Wolf helped you out of venom might have toned down their rivalry a bit."

"The rivalry of Fox McCloud and Wolf O'Donnell has nothing to do with James McCloud, they both just want to be the best in the galaxy and Wolf uses James to push Fox's buttons, he doesn't mean half of the things he says to Fox over the comm. Me telling Fox the truth of what happened on Venom would only lead to possible hesitation while in combat with Wolf. They are an interesting pair, almost perfect opposites. Fox started life with everything, then lost it all, finally gaining respect in the Lylat wars. Wolf, on the other hand, started with nothing and made a life for himself, only to gain the hatred of the galaxy in the Lylat wars. They're almost mirror images of each other."

They sat quietly before Peppy launched into another lesson, "It's easy to just see people as others do, see them as you're told to see them, but you'll never get the whole story from one source. You learned about the Lylat wars right?"

"Yeah, the ones between Venom and Corneria, right?"

"Yes, and how did you learn about them?"

"Slippy leant me a documentary on them."

"And who was it made by?" Peppy questioned.

"The Cornerian Broadcast Network, I think"

"So it depicted the people of Venom as bloodthirsty conquerors on a crusade of violence?"

"Yeah, basically."

"It was a propaganda flick made by the Cornerian government to wholly justify the whole deal to their ignorant subjects. The people of Venom turned to Andross only because the laws of Corneria don't protect apes. We did nothing to change it and eventually we forced the apes to turn to a charismatic tyrant who would exploit their problems. Now, I'm not justifying the Venomians for their hand in the war, but many of their soldiers were fighting injustice for the hope of a better future. Do you get it?"

Krystal nodded so Peppy continued, "It's just like Star Wolf, Corneria will tell you that they're pirates and murderers but if you ask the impoverished workers of Titania, they'll tell you that Star Wolf are heroes for ridding the planet of the Titanian mob."

"So, what?" Krystal asked finally, "are you suggesting I really try out for Star Wolf?"

"If that feels right to you, sure. You'll have to work for it though, Wolf hates the weak," Peppy chuckled.

"You callin' me weak?" Krystal demanded with a smirk on her face.

"There's a smile," Peppy said happily.

The ship decelerated and latched into it dockings with a dull thunk that reverberated through the hull. Rob's robotic voice came on over the intercom.

"Docking complete, welcome to Corneria."

"Well I guess that's my cue, wish me luck." Krystal stood, hugged Peppy, grabbed her bag and walked out of her room towards the exit.

"Good luck Krystal," Peppy called from down the hall. _Hopefully you manage to find a lasting home,_ he thought to himself.

Krystal stepped off the loading ramp of the Great Fox II and looked out over the dark spaceport of Goldwine city, named after city founder Robert Goldwine. This side of Corneria currently faced away from the nearby sun and the time on the spaceport clock read 01:34.

"Well at least less people will see me in this get-up," Kristal muttered to herself, _What the hell was I thinking buying a skin tight cat suit? Well it's either this or the royal garments for now._

She reached in a side pocket where she had put her passport and documentation as she walked towards the exit checkpoint on the other end of the docks.

"What the_?_"Her paw wrapped around an unfamiliar envelope that had been hastily shoved in the pocket. She opened it to reveal a note reading "Hope you find this, good luck! Slippy & Peppy." wrapped in the note were two 1,000cr credit chips, universal currency in the Lylat system. _Thanks guys._

After exiting the spaceport Krystal set her sights on settling into the town so she could plan her next course of action. After buying several new sets of clothes that were, at least to her knowledge, very civilian, she wandered back towards a small hotel she had seen shoved up against the outside wall of the spaceport. It took some retracing of her steps but eventually Krystal found herself in the quiet hotel's small lobby. The check-in desk was empty, but a sign on the counter read "Please ring bell for service."

Hesitantly, Krystal pushed the small button next to the sign. Several moments passed and she was about to go and find somewhere else when a door marked "Manager" behind the desk opened as an old crow wearing a nightgown stepped out.

"Sorry if I woke you," Krystal apologized quietly.

"Nonsense child," the old crow crooned while fumbling with her thick glasses " starships come and go at all times and it's that business that I rely on! So you'll be needing a room then?"

"Yes please. Single."

The old crow hummed an unfamiliar tune while she processed the transaction and handed Krystal her key. "Room's up three floors, on your left. Good night, dear."

"Good night," Krystal responded as she turned towards the steep staircase in the middle of the room. She got to her room and only had enough energy to throw her bag into the corner and collapse on the bed.

Krystal fell asleep looking out the window near her bed, it had a clear view of the ships arriving and departing the busy port.

* * *

Krystal was awoken the following morning by a loud screeching noise. The noisy culprit wasn't hard to spot. Outside her window, a massive Cornerian transport ship was in the process of taking off. The five massive engines struggled to get the ship off of the ground and free of the planet's gravity. Windows shook loudly in their frames as the freighter put the throttle to full and, slowly, the ship made its way into orbit.

_No wonder this place was so cheap, _she thought to herself while glancing over at the clock. The digital display read 08:53. As much as she wanted to just roll over and go back to sleep, she knew that oversleeping accomplished nothing right now. Rolling out of bed, Krystal planned her out her morning.

"Ok," she thought out loud "First jog around the city, then hit the bank for some smaller denomination chips, and then breakfast, sounds good."

Donning running shoes, sweatpants, and a Goldwine university hooded sweatshirt, Krystal hoped she looked like any other college student as she went for a morning jog around the city. Not that it was possible to jog around the whole city, Goldwine was a massive, sprawling city sitting in a flat Cornerian plain. A peculiar place, almost 90% of Goldwine was zoned as commercial. The only fulltime residents here worked in or owned the hundreds of thousands of shops. It was a ridiculously scaled up shopping center where, if it was legal, you could find it somewhere and if it wasn't legal you just had to look harder.

After ending her run at the bank near her hotel, Krystal exchanged one of the 1,000cr chips for various low, more manageable chips. It would be hard to buy a 3cr coffee with an 1,000cr chip. Heading back up to her room for a shower and a change of clothes, she continued to think over her situation.

_how does one go about finding another pilot group? I guess I could go freeze myself in a big piece of glass again and just wait for someone else to stumble upon me. _

Krystal started to realize just how unprepared for regular life she was, _I went from tribal princess to orphan to mercenary fighter pilot in my life, I don't know how this shit works._

She mentally scolded herself for the attitude, _You raised yourself on your own just fine, now you just need to do it again._

* * *

Nearly a week had passed since Krystal arrived and she was making zero progress on finding new work, _The race started and I still can't finding the starting line, _she sighed as she stepped out of the shower.

It hadn't gotten any warmer during her jog that morning so after her shower Krystal threw on a different hooded sweatshirt and the first pair of pants she found. Descending into the lobby, she noticed the old crow, sitting in a rocking chair while reading a book.

"Excuse me," Krystal announced herself as she approached the old woman.

The crow set her book down and replaced her reading glasses with the thick pair of spectacles that she wore the night when Krystal arrived, the woman's eyesight was obviously very poor. "Oh, it's you," The crow stated, recognizing her "How'd ya sleep child?"

"Just fine, thanks"

"Oh, well that's good. It's been rough here since they put the freighter docks on the other side of the wall."

_She might have a handle on what's going on around here, _Krystal thought. "Do you know where I could maybe start looking for some work?"

"What kinda work ya lookin' for dear?"

"Pilot work mostly," Krystal responded politely

"I'd try Frank's, it's an eatery across the street and down a block to the right, he caters to the pilot crowd that comes through."

Krystal thanked the old crow before heading across the street. Frank's was a small, classic diner, preferred by its pilot and bounty hunter clientele for its slightly above average food and Frank's employee policy of keeping their mouths shut. Bounty hunters didn't want some waitress gabbing away while they tried to enjoy their rare ground time.

Krystal found a booth near the back of the restaurant and sat facing away from the glass front of the building. Looking around, her eyes found the bounty board hanging behind the counter. It was covered in flyers advertising active Cornerian bounties. Official bounties were color coded by the paper they were printed on, white represented average crooks, yellow meant that the target was high-priority, and red meant that extreme caution was necessary and targets should be shot on sight. Red was rarely issued publically, for example Star Fox had handled several "red" bounties that never went public. Only one red bounty was on the board, and since it was in the very center of the board it was a bull's-eye for all bounty hunters.

A middle-aged peacock waitress interrupted her thought train momentarily, "Can I get you anything hun?"

"Just some coffee, thanks," Krystal responded

"Any particular kind?"

"Whatever you have is fine."

The flyer had the heads of the three members of team Star Wolf. the prices for each of the members was displayed below the picture of their respective head. Wolf's head sat in the center over his name and the very large sum of 50,000cr. Leon had a 30,000cr bounty and Panther had 20,000cr. The bottom of the flyer clearly read, "If all three eliminated, collecting party will receive double the total payout."

The waitress set a mug of steaming coffee in front of Krystal and walked away quietly.

_How the hell did you guys manage this bounty?_ Krystal wondered, _The anglar invasion was under a month ago and they cleared the existing price on your heads after that._

She was so wrapped up in thinking what the hell Star Wolf could of pulled off that would warrant the prices on their heads that she almost missed a bit of commotion behind the counter. The large pig, who she assumed was Frank, was hurriedly pulling the Star Wolf flyer off of the board. He crumpled it up and quickly threw it into the garbage.

She pulled up the hood on her sweatshirt and was about to turn her head to look at what caused the sudden destruction of the bounty flyer when a pair of familiar voices burst through the door.

"What do you mean I'm an embarrassment?" The low voice asked, Krystal immediately recognized it as Panther.

"It means what it means, you make me not want to be near you." The cold voice could only belong to Wolf's pain dealing friend Leon.

"How am I, in anyway way, an embarrassment to you?"

"You just asked a woman, who was obviously with her kids, if she, oh how did you put it, if she wanted to use your cock as a toothbrush."

"So?"

Leon just sighed as they slipped into both sides of the booth right behind Krystal, _Thank the spirits I wasn't facing the front of the store, Panther would have spotted my like that._

"Remind me again why we're even here," Leon questioned in a very bored tone.

"Leon, don't you listen at the meetings, our commander is here meeting his contact to buy-"

"Yeah, fuck you, I know why we're **here**," Leon sighed, "I meant, why did you drag us into this hole in the wall? Oh yeah, and shut up, you wanna let everyone know what Wolf's doin here?"

"Leon, what's this?"

"Ummmm... your face?"

"Nope, more specific"

"Your... mouth?"

"Yes, and it, as you can see, is very empty, coincidentally my stomach, which is down here, is also empty. Thankfully they build places like this for just such an occasion!"

The waitress walked over to their table, "Can I get ya boys anything?"

"Hmmmmm," Panther pondered vocally ,"Pancakes. I'll have pancakes."

"And for you sir?" she questioned Leon.

"Water's fine"

"It'll be out soon." she walked back behind the counter and relayed the order to Frank.

"Why didn't you eat on the ship?" Leon seemed to be getting annoyed .

"All Wolf brought were those **disgusting** army rations. I'd rather not eat all day then put another one of those things in my mouth. How do you choke those things down?"

"You know I don't taste much of anything."

The two Star Wolf members sat quietly until the waitress returned with Panther's pancakes,

"O ow wong o we haa a ate?"

"Chew your food first retard."

Krystal heard Panther swallow loudly behind her

"Sorry, how long do we have to wait?"

She heard Leon turning to look at the clock on the wall

"Wolf said be back at the ship at 10:00, so we've got 20 minutes."

"Good, plenty of time to enjoy these pancakes!"

Krystal got up and, careful to not show her face to the two at the booth behind her, left 3cr on the counter as she walked out of the restaurant. She had a plan now, it wasn't very good and it only covered the next few hours, but hopefully it'd pay off in the long run.

Upon returning to the hotel, Krystal bounded up the stairs to her room. She threw all of belongings once again into the old ammo sack that had the honor of carrying her whole life up to this point in it. Returning to the lobby, she didn't see the old crow anywhere.

_Well, I won't be needing you where I plan on going, _Krystal thought and set a 500cr chip on the cash register behind the counter, it was more than twice what was owed for a week long stay.

With her bag slung over her shoulder, Krystal positioned herself on the opposite side of Frank's from the star port. If it worked as it should Panther and Leon would stay in Frank's until it was almost time for them leave, then they'd head straight to their ship. she'd just follow them there and sneak onboard somehow. She found an alley wall to lean against that had a view of Frank's so she'd be off of the sidewalk and less obvious.

Krystal was so intent on focusing on the front door of Franks she almost let out a startled yelp when Wolf O'Donnell walked right past her. Krystal managed to suppress the yelp into a slight cough and froze when she saw Wolf's ear twitch in her direction. Wolf paused for only a fraction of a second before continuing on towards the spaceport.

Krystal glanced up at the clock tower in the nearby plaza, it read 09:55. _Hurry up guys, you're going to be late._

As if on cue the two remaining Star Wolf members exited Frank's and turned towards the port. Krystal followed them from a respectable distance, keeping her head low. They were soon at the spaceport and Krystal was carefully weaving her way through parked ships. She had lost sight of the Star Wolf team in the dense maze of pressure hulls.

_Damn it, where did they go? _A rusty freighter slowly lifted off of the ground two rows over from her. _Shit, is that theirs?_

As she looked around the ship she was leaning on the feeling of dread washed away. Panther and Leon were walking up a rust red freight ship's loading ramp as two large lizards loaded Venomian military crates, from a large truck nearby, onto the ship. Krystal worked her way back and around a group of ships so she could get closer to the ship and use the truck as cover.

_Good thing there are so many things to hide behind in here, _Krystal mentally thanked her luck so far. From her new vantage point at the front of the truck, she could see that none of the Star Wolf members were in the cargo hold. _That means I just have to get by these two goons and I'm in. _She snuck back around the ships until she was as close to the loading ramp from the side as she could be while still being behind something. The two remaining crates in the truck looked too big and heavy for one of the lizards to carry on his own so she waited until both of them started to crawl into the bed of the old army vehicle before bolting for the cargo bay. Once inside she immediately threw herself behind one of the larger crates. The space between the crate and the wall was slight, but it was big enough for her to curl up and set the ammo bag on top of her as makeshift camouflage. The olive drab bag would blend right in with the olive drab crates in the poorly lit hold.

_Great, now we play the waiting game, _She heard the lizards load the last two crates and the ramp began closing the ship off from the outside. Her stomach dropped as the ramp didn't hiss as it met the hull. _This old piece of shit doesn't have a pressurized hold! _

She could feel the engines start up as the ship began its preflight routine. _Shit if I get stuck in here I'll be no better off than stepping out of an airlock mid-warp. _Standing up, she heard the sickening sound of the cargo bay's inner airlock door hissing shut.

She ran over to the door and tried to fit her staff's edge into the seal, _No good, It's too thick._

_Fuck, I've only got one shot at this. _Krystal jumped into action, her only hope lay in the possibility that the ships safety systems were all working properly. She ran around the cargo hold opening the various crates.

"Shit, just fatigues," she sighed slamming the crate of Venomian army fatigues shut.

"Combat vests, canteens, helmets, flashlights," Krystal grew more frantic with every crate she pried open. The deck below her shifted and she felt the ship lift and start to turn. It was preparing to launch itself out of the atmosphere. She considered just opening the crate marked "Grenades" and blowing the door, but the explosive pressure wave would kill her anyway in such a small room.

Grabbing a smaller footlocker off of the ground she hurled it at the pressure door. As it hit, the rusty latch broke and the boxes' contents spilled across the floor of the bay. Krystal's heart rejoiced as she saw the pile of Venomian combat knives roll across the steel floor. Grabbing one, she jammed it into the door's seal as the ship started to accelerate. With all her might she pushed on the knife, using it as leverage to pry the door open. Her senses detected that the ship had stopped moving, if it was working correctly it would open the airlock and shut it again to try and get a good seal. Sure enough the airlock swung open and Krystal slipped through into the small space between the airlock door and the inner ship door. Whoever was piloting the ship was apparently satisfied that the airlock had resealed and the ship once again began build up speed.

_Ok, now I play the waiting game, _she let out a stressed laugh as she wiped her sweaty paws on her shirt. soon she felt weightlessness overtake her, _Of course a ship this small wouldn't have artificial gravity._

After waiting in the cramped midpoint between ship and hold for roughly half an hour, she braved a look through the small window in the ships inner door. The hallway was like a four-way intersection, she guessed that the door opposite her led to the cockpit and that the intersecting hallway connected the meager facilities. She couldn't stay in the entry as the loading crew would see her when they landed so, seeing that the hallway was deserted, she opened the inner door and floated into the hallway.

_My guess is that there are four people on board, a pilot for this tub and the other three, so just got to avoid 'em 'till we get to wherever the hell we're going. _She shut her eyes and read the auras of the people on the ship. Just as she thought, there was one aura in the cockpit ahead of her and then three more off to her left . Floating down the hallway to the right she encountered only one door, unfortunately it happened to be the ships bathroom. Hearing the cockpit door open forced her to take shelter in the small bathroom. She quickly shoved her bag in a closet built into the wall and, seeing only one place to hide, took cover in the cabinet underneath the sink. From down the hallway she heard the pilot talking to Star Wolf.

"Commander, the ship is functioning properly, at full speed we'll be back at Sargasso in approximately 40 minutes if the asteroid field favors us."

She was too far away to hear the response but she doubted it was relevant given that she was going to be stuck in this bathroom for 40 minutes.

_Oh well, it's fine if as long as nobody has to poop for 40 whole minutes._

Unfortunately it took less than 10 minutes for someone to feel the urge. Krystal heard the door of the bathroom slide open and a pair of heavy boots walk in. The bathroom door slid shut automatically as Krystal heard the newcomer fumbling with their belt.

"Ah shit, I really need to stop eating those fuckin' Venomian rations, it's like eating shit that then shits in your bowels," the gruff and vulgar voice speaking to no one in particular was obviously Wolf O'Donnell's, "I mean really, If I ate nothing but that shit for a week, then collected all the shit I shit out, I would be able to make more rations than I ate, and they'd probably taste better, fuck!"

Krystal quietly brought a paw to her muzzle to stifle a laugh that threatened to escape, _So this is the great Wolf O'Donnell, reduced to a pile of curse word at his own diet. _

What happened next was far from funny to Krystal though because at that moment in a flurry of escaping bowel gas and feces, Wolf took a massive crap in that poor toilet.

"Ah, fuckin' christ that stinks, man... Fuck!" The whole episode had reduced Wolf to a flight school freshman as he started laughing about what had just done to the bathroom.

Krystal had to agree with him, it stunk like nothing she had ever smelled before, and she had seen what comes out of a fully grown Red-eye. She brought her sweatshirt up to her nose to try breathing through it. _Curse my sensitive senses!_

She wished he would hurry up and just flush the fucking toilet already. Wolf wiped, stood up, and turned to flush the offending mess down the drain when the unthinkable happened. Krystal heard wolf press the flush button but only got a faint whirring in response.

"Shit, toilets busted again. Ah well, who gives a shit?" And with that ironic question Wolf turned and left the room.

She heard him yell to the pilot that the "Shitter was broke so don't use it."

The next 25 minutes would be one of the absolute worst of Krystal's 23 year life to that point.

After an uneventful yet smelly ride, she heard the small ship's landing gear touch down in the hanger of Wolf's hideout and base of operations in the Sargasso region of the Meteo asteroid belt. She didn't waste time after she heard the crew leave before sneaking out too. The crew who would unload the ship and clean that toilet wouldn't take too long before getting to their duties.

Looking out one of the portholes revealed that they had landed in one of the hideout's massive hangers and, for now at least, the recent inhabitants of the ship were the only people in it besides her. The Star Wolf team and the freighter pilot then exited out of one of the many doors. Using her telepathy she felt that a large group of beings were in the cargo elevator in the corner, they were five floors up so she didn't have much time. Grabbing her bag out of the closet, Krystal bolted out of the ship and headed for the door that Wolf and his team left through. Sensing for people on the other side she felt that the Star Wolf team was in an elevator heading for the top floor of the huge asteroid base.

_No one's around so it's now or never I guess, _Krystal stealthily ducked into the hallway and made her way over to the elevator. She closed her eyes and focused on the auras of the base, they were far above her head but Krystal could barely make out Wolf's aura. As she thought, the elevator stopped on the top floor and Wolf stepped out of her sensual range. What she needed was somewhere to sit and think about all of this, this was where her original plan ended.

Felling no aura's near her she freely opened and closed several doors, looking for a room that she wouldn't be discovered in as she sat and pondered her situation. The doors in the area all seemed to lead to maintenance rooms, which were unreliable hiding spots as they were surprisingly frequented by workers trying to take unscheduled breaks. One of the doors led to something unexpected however.

As she crossed the threshold of the room, Krystal couldn't help but be puzzled at the what lay before her. What once was a bedroom, judging by the flipped and ravaged mattress leaning against the wall, was now a scene of utter chaos. Dust coated the floor so Krystal knew that no one had come in here in a long time. As she looked around things began to jump out at her, there was blood sprayed on one of the walls as well as drips and pools of dried blood on the carpet. None of the furniture in the room was untouched, all of it had been upended and smashed. Someone had tried to destroy the essence of whoever was here, the few picture frames were blackened as if the picture they held were burnt right there. As she turned around she noticed a round scorch mark on the door, as if someone shot at the person leaving but the door had cut the shot off.

_This is just too interesting, _Krystal thought to herself. She cleared a patch of carpet, sat, and began concentrating. She probed for the time when the emotions ran highest in this strange place. Telepathy allowed her to almost go back in time and see events that made a large impact on the people and place where she was. She lost touch with her present reality as her psyche travelled back into the past.

* * *

She arrived in the past in a ghost like form, she could move freely around the area where she sat in reality. Here though, the people couldn't be interacted with, it was like watching a historical holo-vid.

A fat pig sits at the desk in his room. He is mumbling to himself as he slides credit chips across the surface of the desk. He seems to be counting them, as one would count out a pile of gold coins by hand.

The door slides open and Wolf O'Donnell steps heavily into the room.

"Oh, hey there Wolf," the fat pig grunts as he turns to see who entered without the courtesy of knocking.

"What'cha got there Pigma," Wolf demands, his posture is hostile and he is slightly baring his sharp fangs.

Pigma is oblivious to it as he finishes his counting, "Oh I was counting the last payout we got, just wanted to make sure ya' didn't short change me or anything."

"Oh well isn't that a coincidence," Wolf snarls as he crosses the room and flips Pigma's bed onto its side.

"Wh-What are ya' doin' Wolf?"

"I think that you've been short changin' me or somethin'." Wolf dragged his sharp claws along the bottom of the mattress, spilling what was obviously millions of credits worth of chips on the floor. "Well, Well, what do we have here?"

"Well ya know, Wolf, I'm the advisor to the team, and I'm the elder, so, ya know, I thought maybe, I don't know, maybe I deserved a little bonus to my personal take. You know I've always been a loyal-"

The rage that Wolf had been holding in during Pigma's ramblings exploded as the word "loyal" fell out of Pigma's fat mouth.

"What the fuck did ya' just say?" Wolf screamed as he crossed the room and brought his claws down on Pigma's forehead, "WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY!"

The claws ripped Pigma's flesh to the bone and he stumbled backwards, blinded by the blood running into his eyes.

"I-I'm sorry Wolf, I'm sor-sorry!" Pigma squealed in pain from his head wound. His hands floundered in the air in the vain attempt to ward off another possible attack.

Wolf caught one the moving arms and, holding Pigma's wrist tight with one hand, snapped his elbow backward with a palm strike from his other hand.

Pigma howled in pain and tried to cradle his mangled arm as Wolf kicked him backwards into his desk. Pigma flailed and managed to grab his blaster in his good hand as Wolf descended on him again. Wolf twisted the blaster out of his hand roughly, snapping Pigma's trigger finger in the process.

"Don't you ever talk about loyalty you sack of shit!" Wolf's fury flew in the face of a blubbering Pigma who was blinded by a mixture of blood and his own tears. "You don't know what loyalty is! You weren't loyal to James or Peppy, you gave your teammates up for a quick sack of change! You aren't loyal to me, the only reason you're even here is because Andross put your sorry ass here. You and that fucker Oikonny are absolutely worthless to me!" Wolf had started rhythmically slamming his fist into Pigma's face as he yelled. "I pay you more than anyone else fucking would, an equal four way split, I gave you a fighter that I bought, this room is in my base that I paid for, and still you're such a limp dick, greedy sack of shit that you dare steal from me?"

Pigma seemed to be trying to speak out of his blubbering mouth, "Wolfff, I'm, I-I'm... I'm Sorry."

"Enough!" Wolf hauled off and smashed Pigma's face with as much force as he could muster. The crack of Pigma's jaw separating from his skull reverberated in the small room. Several teeth fell out of his drooping, broken mouth. "I've fucking had it with your shit!" Wolf threw Pigma across the room towards the door. He grabbed Pigma's fallen blaster, spun and fired at where the pig should have been. All Wolf ended up hitting was the door as it slid shut, leaving a round scorch mark on the steel.

Wolf's rage was anything but sated after his assault on Pigma, so now he turned it loose on the room itself. He burned the pictures in their frames, smashed the furniture, ripped up the clothes, and destroyed everything that he could possibly take apart.

Wolf brought an end to the destruction by punching the steel wall of the room. The cracking of his finger bones disintegrating was barely audible over the clang of the Wolf's most recent victim, the bulkhead. Wolf pulled his hand back and tried to make a fist with it, only his thumb and pinky answered the call and curled up. His damage done, Wolf slumped down against the wall, his shattered hand dripping more blood on the carpet.

With his good hand covering his eyes, Wolf sat trying to compose himself. His good hand soon found its way to his vest pocket and pulled out a small piece of cloth.

Krystal had to stand "Inside" wolf, as his back was against the wall, to get a look at what it was. She looked down to see that Wolf was rubbing his thumb back and forth across a Star Fox team flight patch. She concluded that it must have been James McCloud's once judging by the amount of fading and wear it showed.

"I wish you could've done that yourself," she heard Wolf whisper.

* * *

Krystal was forced back to her reality as the Emotions weren't strong enough to anchor her in the past anymore. The vision had taken its toll on Krystal's mind and without her consent , she passed out from mental exhaustion in Pigma's old room.

Krystal opened her eyes slowly, _Where am I,_ she wondered, not recognizing her surroundings. Quickly all of the things she saw earlier flooded back to her. _Wow_, was the only thought she could come up with on the subject.

_So how the hell am I going to get on the Star Wolf team, do I just walk up to the top floor and ask somebody for an application?_

The answer, of course, was the obvious one. The only way to get onto a team like Star Fox or Star Wolf was to have someone on the team bring you in, and there was only one person on Star Wolf who Krystal trusted not to shoot her on sight.

"Panther," she sighed. He had constantly flirted with her and in dogfights he never fired on her ship. If she showed up, and he was alone, he would hear her out.

_So that's the plan then, _she thought to herself, _I'll try to find Panther alone, explain my situation, and hope he can convince Wolf to let me on the team. First things first though, I have to get up to the top floor._

Krystal again sensed no one near this sector of the asteroid base. She quietly slipped out of the room and approached the gleaming silver elevator doors at the end of the hallway. There was only one button where there should have been two, _Must be a private elevator that only services the top floor._

At the push of the button a hologram projector sticking out of the wall next to the doors whirred to life. What popped up on the projector was a shock to Krystal, it was a moving figure of what appeared to be a Red-eye from Sauria. The Tyrannosaur like creature was far from pristine, however, the right side of its body appeared badly burned, on the right side of its face the cheek was gone and patches of exposed muscle and bone were visible.

The terrifying little holo-creature turned towards her and looked as if it was appraising her.

"You are not in my list of authorized persons," the burnt Saurian spoke with a low, almost demonic, rumbling voice.

In her shock at seeing what was looking at her, all she could manage was a timid, "Excuse me?"

"This is a restricted area, all who are allowed access are logged in my recognition program." The creature looked her over again, "Hm, are you, by chance, another prostitute invited by one Panther Caroso?"

_What the... oh he definitely would. _Thinking quick, Krystal saw her chance when it presented itself.

"Oh, Yes, yes I am," she responded, still a bit wary of the Saurian hologram.

"Ah, of course, pilot Caroso is currently alone in the Star Wolf lounge, I shall call the elevator for you." The creature turned and looked towards the elevator doors. "Elevator moving, ETA 1.3 minutes."

"Umm, what are you exactly?" Krystal couldn't help but ask the projection.

The creature focused back on her, "I am AI-REX-0003. It stands for Artificial Intelligence-Rapid-Expansionary-Experimental and I am the third one of my kind. I currently control all automated and defense aspects of this base. All other information is classified to civilians. You may refer to me as REX if you don't wish to say the whole thing, I have been informed that it is ironic, humorous, funny, and easy to remember, among other things, but then again what do I know?"

The elevator dinged as the doors opened to reveal a dark-wood paneled, red carpeted, elevator carriage.

REX's voice came on over the elevator speakers, "When the elevator stops, proceed directly down the hall. The Lounge is at the end. Do not deviate from that course. Sensors indicate that Commander O'Donnell and First Lieutenant Powalski are sleeping and it would be unwise to wake them. Oh, and please keep all love stains off of the furniture"

"Thanks, I guess," was the only thing that Krystal could think to say to the mysterious AI being.

When the elevator stopped, Krystal obeyed REX's orders and headed straight for the Lounge at the end of the hallway. As she approached the door it slid silently open, allowing access to the lounge. Panther sat at the table in the middle of the room with his back to the door.

_Well here goes nothin',_ Krystal thought as she took a step into the lounge. The lounge door was so quiet that Panther hadn't noticed it open but Krystal's shoe stepping on the carpet caused Panther's ears to perk up.

"What's up Wol-," he stopped short as he saw who stood in the doorway. "Krystal?"

"Hey Panther."

* * *

Thanks for bothering to read through the first chapter. I hope you would like more, and if you do, comment! As the writer I shred myself on this stuff and if no one comments then I end up talikng myself out of writing anymore of it. Your comments feed my soul! I'll try to fight through college summer class and my hunt for a job to update this again soon.

Also, regarding OOC-ness, It's my personal belief that nothing regarding the members of Star Wolf in this chapter is really OOC. We see so little of them and have no idea what these guys are truly like, so I argue that what they say and do is within reasonable bounds.


	3. Sargasso nights

Author's note: Just from the way I've been writing this, it seems like the story will follow this pattern: Long chapters from Krystal's POV and interjecting Wolf POV chapters that will be shorter and will help us understand what kind of person Wolf is as well as what made him what he is today.

* * *

Wolf's eye opened for the third time in his 43 minutes of attempted sleep. Growling at the futility of trying to sleep tonight, Wolf raised himself from his bed. He dragged his heavy feet over to the mirror above his dresser.

The reflection staring back at him told a silent story of countless hardships endured. The most prominent wound was the gaping hole where his left eye should have been. There weren't even eyelids attached to that eye anymore, they had to be removed due to infection of the original wound. A small metal port peeked out from the back of the socket where his new mechanical eye patch could connect to his brain. Scars crisscrossed his torso and he remembered them all. Stab wounds, claw tracks, blaster burns, and a semi circle of puncture wounds that came from a very angry predator during a black-op on Sauria. They told his past and he was proud that he lived with this many reminders of his actions, _You can get tattoos anywhere, scars are the true mark of action._

As he ran his claw around the rim of his open socket to clear some dirt that had built up in there, he started thinking back to the day that literally changed his perception on life, _No, none of that. You're done thinking about that._

Out of the corner of his good eye he saw that a yellow light was blinking on the holo-projector in his room. A yellow light meant that REX would like to tell him something, but whatever it was wasn't deemed important enough to bother waking him. He touched the light and the small silver platform whirred to life.

"Oh, so you are awake still commander?" The small AI being looked up at Wolf, "does your problem persist?"

Wolf suffered from a moderate case of AGNS, Acute Genetic Nocturnal Syndrome, it was a rare genetic disorder in canids that caused spurts of insomnia as their bodies tried to switch to a nocturnal schedule temporarily. Stress increased the frequency of the issues and stress was one of the things that Wolf had plenty of.

"Yeah," Wolf growled groggily, "The tranquilizers the doc gave me didn't do shit."

"Unfortunate."

"What did you want anyway?" Wolf asked with more hostility than he intended.

REX didn't seem fazed as he began explaining what he had wanted to tell Wolf, "In disregard to previous orders, it seems that pilot Caroso has again brought a prostitute into the Sargasso hideout. Although I wasn't entirely sure that your argument with pilot Caroso left actual orders to not do it, so I did allow the woman into the lounge. Audio sensors confirm that they are still there."

Before REX had even finished his story, Wolf had already moved to his dresser and was fishing out a pair of old Venomian army pants. Deciding that his new eye patch wasn't worth the hassle just to go bitch out Panther and scare whatever floozy he brought into the hideout this time, Wolf exited his room in only his pants.

_Damn it Panther, how hard is it to just listen to me once and a while. I brought you on to replace two people who already didn't listen to me. You sure as hell are making me regret picking your sorry ass up. _Wolf continued his silent fuming until he reached the lounge.

"Panther, what the fuck did I-," Wolf froze in puzzlement as he saw who sat with his rookie pilot in the plush room. His hand instinctively went for his blaster before he realized that it was on the table in his room.

Both of the people at the table looked at him with fear in their wide eyes. Wolf's mind raced as the different possible scenarios popped up.

"What the fuck's goin' on here Panther?" Wolf demanded.

"Wolf, er, Commander, I can explain."

"I'll bet you can." Wolf turned around and walked back to his room, put on a shirt and his old cloth eye patch, and before he left, buckled his holster around his waist and stuffed his custom blaster in it.

"Alright Panther, talk quick before my patience runs out," Wolf snarled as he strolled back into the lounge, hand gripped tightly around the handle of his blaster.

Panther was standing now and Krystal was intently studying the wood lines in the table.

"Krystal would like to join Star Wolf," Panther responded quickly.

It would have been hard for Panther to tell but Wolf wasn't listening to him, he was instead listening to the cold voice in the earpiece he was wearing.

Wolf's eye switched focus from Panther to Krystal, "You," he barked "outside, now."

Krystal stood up from the table and stepped outside but remained with earshot of the conversation.

"Panther, I never took you for someone particularly smart, but I also never thought you were this stupid."

"Sir, she could be a huge asset to the team, plus she's got some sort of power, telepathy or something. She said McCloud kicked her off Star Fox."

"You're blinder than my left eye if you can't see what's goin' on here Panther. It's obviously a set-up. They send her over with a sob story so she can spy on us or kill us in our sleep or somethin'. McCloud doesn't have the balls to let a package like that go free agent. She's just trying to seduce you and get you to do her bidding."

"That's just what I suspected actually, so I made myself easy and flirted with her, as I've been known to do, and she turned me down."

"What?"

"She told me that she wasn't interested in me, straight to my beautiful face. I know, if I was going to infiltrate Star Wolf I'd start by seducing me too, so she's either really good or really bad at her job, unless what she's saying is true."

_Hmmm, Interesting, _Wolf thought to himself, " Girl, get in here."

Krystal stepped quietly back into the room. Panther was looking solemnly at the floor and Wolf's purple eye scrutinized her.

"Since I'm apparently not sleeping tonight, I'll keep an eye on her in here, Panther, get your ass to bed."

"Yes sir," the black cat responded before quickly leaving the lounge.

Wolf walked over to the fridge and grabbed a cold soda, looking over he noticed Krystal standing near the door, staring down at the floor, "The timid girl routine isn't winnin' you any points, girl, 'sides, I don't buy it anyway."

Krystal's eyes met his one eyed gaze and he saw what he expected, steely determination. He plopped down in one of the padded chairs at the table and motioned her to have a seat.

Wolf's one eye studied her coldly as he took a long drink from the bottled drink, "So let me get this straight, McCloud just forces one of his pilots, a telepath and the only piece of tail on that ship of his, out of Star Fox, I don't see it, McCloud's balls are too small for that."

"I think he only wanted me to stop flying initially, with the invasions of Corneria happening every other year, I think he thought it was too dangerous for me or something. I told him that flying was what I wanted to do and that I couldn't just give it up, I've been flying since I could run, it's my life."

"So McCloud loses his temper with ya and boots your butt right off the team? And you decided what? That if he wouldn't let you fly, fuck him, you'd just find someone who would?" Wolf asked incredulously.

"Yeah, well actually Peppy sort of suggested that I try and come here," Krystal admitted.

_Peppy? Nobody but me and that rabbit know about our past, and if she's bringing his name up, then she must know._

"What'd he tell you," He questioned the vixen. He wasn't looking her in the eye, he was watching the slightly distorted section of the wall near the table.

"He told me about how you saved his life on Venom and that you guys weren't the evil, murderous, scumbags that the galaxy made you out to be."

"Ha," Wolf laughed, "well that's somewhat true, but we are kinda murderous scumbags. How'd she do Leon?"

The cold assassin of the Star Wolf team morphed out of the wall, his color changing from the red of the walls to its usual green, "No tells with you or Panther, she's telling the truth or she was trained by Venomian commandos, which I doubt," the chameleon spoke in his typical cold manner.

"Ya see, Leon here is an expert in torture and interrogation, he can tell if you're lying quicker and more accurately than any machine ever could. What do we know Leon?"

"She didn't steal anything, or try and get to any sensitive areas of the base, she meditated in Pigma's room for a while, but then she headed for the elevator and went straight for the lounge when REX told her that Panther was alone in here. Oh, and she did shoot Panther down pretty hard."

"How long have you been following me?" Krystal stared wide-eyed at the chameleon

"Since you stumbled off of the ship"

"But how? I never sensed anyone near me," Krystal obviously couldn't believe that Leon had tracked her without her knowledge.

"Since you never sensed me, my guess is that your powers can only sense people based on their emotions, I don't have any."

Wolf watched as Krystal shut her eyes tight, obviously trying to sense Leon, after a few seconds her face fell and she opened her eyes.

"Good work Leon, still a 'no' from you though, I'm assuming?" wolf questioned his teammate

"Still a no," Leon confirmed

Wolf turned to Krystal, "Leon here says no, but Panther says yes, I'm undecided so I guess you get a shot. We'll put you through the paces and see if you're Star Wolf material." Wolf stood up and headed towards the door with Leon in tow, "get some sleep, it's gonna' be a rough week!"

* * *

End of short Wolf chapter. Hopefully I'll have another long one up on the 4th so I'd check back then if you're really into it. (I do so hope that you are.) Latez.


	4. A rough first day

Author's note: I'm really happy that I got this one done for today, although later than I would've liked. It's another longer one though if that counts for anything. It starts the morning after the previous one.

* * *

Krystal heard the heavy stomping of boots coming for her. Diving behind a box for cover, she aimed her weapon at the doorway where the footsteps were coming from. Two tall apes dressed in black fatigues and combat gear stepped cautiously into the room, scanning the area with their rifles raised. She stayed crouched behind the crates and wiped the sweat from her brow. When she heard footsteps again she peered over the edge of the box and saw the two monkeys walking out of the room.

Rolling out of her cover, Krystal put a round in each of their heads, _well that's 4 down so far, 4 left._

She heard the crack of a rifle too late and a projectile smacked into her stomach, _Shit, _she put her paw to her stomach and it came back red.

The loudspeaker on the wall crackled to life, "She's hit, reset the simulation," Wolf's voice sounded even more gruff over the old speakers. "Nice shot Captain."

_Damn Gregor, _the lean rabbit was Wolf's best sniper and was responsible for 4 out 6 of her fails on this test.

She saw Gregor stand up from where he had been laying in wait for his shot, he wasn't even in the shoot house that the test was taking place in, he was way out on one of the hanger balconies. He saluted Wolf who sat in the glass room that hung over the range. From there Wolf could see where everyone was and what was all happening at once.

The test was meant to simulate an urban firefight but the odds were stacked heavily in the defenders favor. She was alone against a squad of 8 ex-Venomian commandos and she was pretty sure that Gregor was a late addition by Wolf just to mess with her. The commando's teamwork was great and they always had a new trick up their sleeve.

Panther had warned her that Wolf's tests always had multiple hidden lessons and were notoriously difficult. _Well if Gregor's not playing by the rules, then I guess I'm done playing fair too, _She decided as she walked back towards the starting point.

"Hey Wolf," she called up to the control booth overhead, "I need a break quick."

Wolf's purple eye watched her suspiciously before ordering a 5 minute break.

She wasted no time in heading for the nearby bathroom. Taking the grey coat that she wore over her purple jumpsuit off and wrapping it around her fist, she punched the mirror with as much force as she dared so as not to damage her hand. The mirror shattered into the sink and she carefully picked a small piece out, wrapping it in toilet paper to avoid cutting herself.

She exited the bathroom and noticed that Gregor was leaning on the wall next to the door. She gave him a quizzical look and he responded with a smirk and a shrug of his shoulders. Yielding the bathroom to the sniper, Krystal noticed that he left his rifle leaning against the wall near the door. The modified sniper held 5 paint marking rounds and fired semi-automatically. It was a more firepower than her small paint blaster offered.

Switching the scope settings on the rifle from 10x zoom to 2x, she walked back to the starting point for her side. Wolf was watching something on the commando's side at the moment, _I doubt that Wolf was nice enough to just take Gregor out of the action, he definitely has something new for me in there._

"Simulation beginning in three, two, one, go!" Wolf barked the start orders over the speakers.

Krystal quickly removed the heavy combat boots she had been wearing to remove her footsteps from the equation. Closing her eyes to sense the auras of the commandos she felt that they were in two groups of four and were moving quickly from room to room on opposite sides of the course. She also sensed a very large aura of confidence at the other end of the range, it's host was obviously hanging back.

_If I try and hang back, both squads will hit me at the same time from different sides. I'll have to take the fight to one of them and wait for the others in an ambush, then there's that newcomer in the back._

She sprinted silently to her left, intent on catching the left group in her sights. Stepping into a room that was haphazardly filled with various crates, she caught sight of a crate that's lid had been wrenched off. Catching on quickly, she found a similar crate and wrenched its lid from the heavily rusted hinges. The lid was 4 feet by 3 feet, made from a cheap, light metal, and, by using the handle to carry it, made a handy shield.

Slinging the rifle over her shoulder, she brought the shield and blaster up in front of her. Sensing the nearby squad searching the next room for her, Krystal burst through the door with her eyes shut, she'd shoot by her telepathy only to avoid exposing herself from behind the shield. Shooting in the general direction of the auras in the room, she heard the fire hitting the shield dissipate and stop after she fired the last round in her clip.

Backing into the wall, she peered around the metal lid and saw the four commandos laying on the floor. She reloaded and put one more round into each of their heads to make sure that they hadn't just faked being hit. Dropping the riddled shield, she was about to leave the room and head back towards the other squad before pausing. She rolled the fallen soldiers over and searched their vest for something that might help her later. One of the soldiers glared at her as she turned him over, he had 3 fat silver cylinders hanging from his vest.

Turning one over in her hand, Krystal read the black letters printed on it, **RG18 FLASHBANG.** She pocketed the grenades and grabbed a commando's automatic rifle and pocketed an extra magazine for it before heading to take out the remaining squad. Her senses told her that they were on way to her position, but they were moving slowly and cautiously. _They must have heard the firefight over here and since Wolf hasn't called off the simulation, they know I'm here somewhere. Too bad I'll find them first._

Having figured out the general layout of the course over her multiple runs through it, she knew that the remaining squad would have to come down wide corridor to get to her and there was a room that ran adjacent to it. She made her way to the room and was relieved to see that several large crates were stacked up against the wall that separated the room she was in and the hallway that the commandos would have to use. She crawled up as high as she could on the crates and waited for the commandos to unwittingly put themselves into position.

She didn't have to wait long as soon she heard the heavy footsteps of booted feet on the others side of the wall. Reaching into her pocket carefully, she pulled out the broken mirror shard and used it to look over the wall, exploiting the fact that the course had no ceilings. In the reflection she saw that the two in the lead were looking down the hallway and behind them the other two covered the squads backside. She carefully reached into her pocket and pulled out one of the flashbangs she had liberated from the eliminated squad. Waiting for the squad to get directly opposite her, she pulled the pin on the grenade and lobbed it over the wall.

Krystal ducked and covered her ears to protect them from the loud sonic explosion generated by the grenade. After she heard it go off she wasted no time in hopping the wall and landing silently in-between the four disoriented soldiers. She brought the automatic rifle up and put a burst of paint shells into each of the blind and deaf combatants.

_Man, I'm getting a bit ruthless in here, _she thought as she looked at the fallen men with red paint dotting their bodies. _I guess that's not really a bad thing, but it feels real enough and I don't think I'd act any different if we were using live ammo. _She couldn't dwell on her apparent lack of feeling towards combat as Wolf hadn't called the simulation off and that confident aura still loomed on the other side of the course.

Krystal looked up at Wolf in the glass booth above her head as she made her way towards the last presence. The Wolf's one eye watched her carefully, he showed no emotion that revealed his reaction as she finally beat his battle-hardened veteran mercs. He shifted his gaze to the direction of Krystal's final opponent and she did as well.

As she approached the place where the commandos had started every round, she realized that the aura was coming from outside the shoot house. Exiting the course out of the commando entrance, she stepped into what looked like a small, walled in, construction zone. Scaffolding sat erected around the space as well as piles of pipes, stacks of steel plates, and various orange and yellow crates of varying sizes.

Krystal's eyes were focused on one thing only, however. Across the space from her, a rusty hover-truck sat on the ground. The double doors of the cargo box pointed directly towards her. She pulled Gregor's rifle off of her back and aimed it at the set of doors. Suddenly the two doors flew open as if an explosion had occurred in the bed of the truck.

What stepped down from the truck stunned Krystal to the point where she didn't even shoot. The hulking figure that stepped out had to be at least 9 feet tall, maybe taller, and it was covered head to toe in a thick suit of body armor. His massive head was covered by a helmet with an attached blast shield that was lowered over his face. The helmet only had a small rectangle of blast-screen that severely limited the wearers vision, but made sure their head was very well protected. The huge hands of her opponent were wrapped around an oversized 6 barreled repeating blaster, a larger, vehicle mounted, version of the light, infantry portable version that she had seen in the Great Fox's armory. The weapon had been crudely modified for less lethal ammunition so it was fed by a belt of shells that were stored in a massive reservoir that the wielder wore like a backpack.

Krystal snapped out of the her daze and pulled the trigger on Gregor's rifle as fast as she could. The rifle kicked back into her shoulder and the five rounds hit the massive torso of the behemoth. Judging by the fact that the armored person responded to her shots with a hail of his own and the fact that Wolf hadn't ended the session, blasters were apparently deemed 'ineffective' against the armor of the vest.

Krystal dove behind a stack of steel plates as a thick stream of rounds poured against her cover. The rotating barrels of the weapon allowed it it's ridiculously high fire rate of nearly 4,000 rounds per minute. The fact that her opponent could even lift the bulky weapon, none the less wield it as an effective tool of war, paid tribute to his obviously immense strength. From what she could see, the person with the gun had over 400 pounds of armor and ammunition resting on his frame.

She pulled one of the remaining two flashbangs out, quickly pulling the pin and releasing the trigger lever. Waiting for a few seconds, she hurled the grenade in her foe's direction over the plates she hid behind. The grenade barely cleared her cover before exploding in its blinding flash of light and deafening sound, far too quickly for the gargantuan being to react and avert his eyes.

Krystal dashed from her cover as her blinded opponent clamped his finger down on the trigger of his powerful weapon. He stood his ground and fanned the near solid stream of shells over the area where he figured she should be, hoping to score a lucky hit and deter an attack while he was vulnerable. Krystal rolled under a steam of bullets that flew by at head height. She dashed around to her opponents backside and jammed a piece of metal from the ground into the rapidly moving ammunition belt. The belt sucked the obstruction up to the loading port and jammed, unable to pull more shells into the action of the weapon.

She had to climb up her large opponents back in order to perch on top of the large ammo can on his back and set to work trying pry his helmet off. _No good, It's buckled to his vest. _The huge being had obviously stopped feeling the effect of the flashbang and had dropped the gatling gun and was trying to reach for Krystal behind his head. Abruptly he slapped two buckles and the heavy ammo can fell from his frame, taking her with it. The huge being rounded on her pulling a stun rod that was the size of a baseball bat from his belt. It crackled as he ignited the very large weapon.

Krystal rolled backwards as he brought the stun club down where she had just lay. He was surprisingly agile without the added weight on his back, _At least I assume it's a him. _Luckily Krystal was faster and for the most part was keeping a very respectable distance in-between her and the beastly figure. She reached the automatic rifle that she had dropped earlier, turned and sprayed the less that accurate weapon at her attackers helmet as he bore down on her. The small view port in the face shield had been covered in red paint.

As the rifle clicked empty, she tried to roll out reach of the behemoth's hands but to no avail as she slipped on some debris. The massive hand that didn't hold the stun baton wrapped around her lag. Even though her opponent was blind, he had still managed to get her. With immense strength, the armored figure threw her across the room. She hit the steel floor hard and saw stars as her head cracked against a pipe. Shaking her head, Krystal noticed that she had been thrown over 20 feet by the huge person.

The person in question turned towards her, his face shield still covered in paint. He tried wiping it away, but it just smeared around and still left him blind. Eventually he stopped trying and just raised the face shield. Krystal found herself looking at a white furred face with a black nose and black eyes. She realized that it was a polar bear, one of the rarest intelligent animals in the Lylat system. It explained his enormous size, all polar bears were huge creatures. He was the first one she had ever seen, experts estimated that only about two to three thousand of them existed in the whole system.

The bear started in on her again and she had to pick herself up off of the ground, wincing as she moved the ribs she had just landed on, _Jeez, might've fractured a couple of 'em there. _

The huge bear swung his stun rod in broad, sweeping arcs. It was getting increasingly difficult for Krystal to avoid him. She reached for her paint blaster but her holster was empty, _Shit, where'd it go! _She spotted it laying near where she was thrown earlier. A plan began forming in her head as she continued avoiding attacks from the polar bear. She backed up in an arc, ending near her fallen pistol.

"Here big boy, catch," She quickly pulled the remaining flashbang out and, pretending to pull the pin, tossed it at the bear's exposed face. Startled, the bear instinctively brought both of his hands up to ward off the flying object, putting the tip of the shock rod dangerously close to his exposed neck. She had counted on that and lunged with both arms into the arm holding the stun rod. She heard the loud crack as the rod made contact.

Kneeling, Krystal turned, grabbed her fallen gun and spun back to face the bear. Surprisingly, the oversized shock stick had failed to fully incapacitate the huge man. He was crouched down on one knee, clutching the charred circle on his throat. He looked back up and Krystal aimed her gun at his exposed forehead. The gun cracked twice and two red paint shells hit the bear in the forehead. Krystal tensed up, the way this fight was going, she expected the huge bear to ignore the shots and simply come for her again.

Pulling his helmet free of his vest, the bear wiped the paint with his paw, his crisp white fur turning pink. He looked at Krystal and let out a hearty laugh. Before she could react he had already approached her and helped her to her feet.

"You certainly have spirit little one," the bear spoke in a deep friendly manner. With that, the huge bear picked up his gun and walked out of the walled in zone of the converted hanger. Krystal was about to relax before she realized that Wolf hadn't ended the session yet. Turning to go and grab the rifle over near the entrance, she nearly ran headlong into the leader of Star Wolf who had silently appeared behind her.

"Wolf," she said surprised, the grey wolf was pointing her fallen rifle at her stomach.

"You let your guard down," he growled.

In a swift motion, Krystal brought her blaster up, leveled it at Wolf's head and pulled the trigger.

*Click*

The gun was empty. Wolf gave her a look of amusement before pulling the trigger on the assault rifle. A stream of red paint shells pelted Krystal's torso.

"Looks like you died again," he stated with a smirk on his muzzle.

"Just a little bit," she responded, laughing a little as she looked down at her once purple flight suit that was now soaked with red paint.

"You did good, girl." Wolf handed her a towel that he had set on a nearby box. "You did real good, Boris is my best fighter, for obvious reasons."

"The bear?"

"Yeah," Wolf confirmed, "He's actually a bit of a softie off of the battlefield but he fights like a monster and in that suit, he's a tank with legs."

"He's really something." Krystal was still a little in awe of the massive man.

"What gave you the balls to try and shoot your superior officer?" Wolf was staring at her a look that she couldn't read.

She shrugged while wiping the excess paint and broken shells off of her suit. "You hadn't ended the simulation and presented yourself as a hostile target."

"I didn't shoot first, how do you know I wasn't your backup?"

"Instinct, I guess, your posture indicated that you were ready to fire and you had your weapon pointed at me, which is kind of strange for a friendly," Krystal concluded.

Wolf laughed his gruff laugh, "Let's go girl, you did good, real good."

As they walked out of the course Wolf told her to go to the team doctor and have herself checked out before he walked away muttering something about dealing with something.

After taking several steps, Krystal realized that she still had no idea where anything was in the sprawling catacombs of the Sargasso meteor base. _Well at least REX will know where I'm supposed to go._

Walking over to one of the handy holo-projectors jutting out of the wall, she pressed the small button on it. The silver pad came to life and the grotesque being popped up.

"Can I help you pilot-in-training," REX inquired in his rumbling, deep voice.

"Wolf told me to see the team doctor, but I don't know how to get there," Krystal informed him.

REX scrutinized her as she wondered why the artificial computer being was so visibly expressive, "I have received confirmation from the commander that you are indeed to see the team's private doctor. Please proceed up two floors and down the hallway to your right," his instructions were accompanied by a 3D map of the base, showing the route with a red line.

"Thanks."

She found the office without too much trouble and knocked on the door, wincing as she moved her sore ribs.

The door slid open and a female snow leopard stood in the doorway, "are you the new recruit," the leopard asked in a professional tone.

Krystal assumed she was and nodded. The doctor certainly looked the part with her sterile, white coat over a pair of scrubs.

"The commander informed me that you had an incident during a training exercise, is that correct?"

Krystal remembered the feeling of the polar bear's massive paw wrapping around her leg, "you could say that."

"So what seems to be injured?"

"Just my left ribs really, I hit my head but that doesn't really hurt anymore," she informed the leopard.

The doctor motioned her to an examination table where she did the usual tests and checked Krystal's head.

"Your head seems to fine, and you don't show any signs of brain trauma," the doctor informed her. The doctor then probed her ribs, asking if it hurt each time. "Let's get some x-rays of those ribs."

The leopard directed her to the x-ray machine in an adjacent room and began setting the machine up. Krystal couldn't help but notice that the leopard seemed incredibly out of place in the Sargasso base. She was young, professional, attractive, and well spoken. Next to the thugs, pirates, and ex-soldiers that inhabited the base, she seemed very strange.

"How do you make it in here," she couldn't help asking.

"Hm?"

"You don't really fit the mold of the other people around here," Krystal clarified. The possibility of getting raped in the base had crossed Krystal's mind a couple of times since she got here, but she could fight off most people if it came down to that, the doctor didn't look like a fighter.

The doctor seemed to pick up on her unspoken concern and laughed a little, "no one would dare touch me on account of my husband."

Krystal noticed a small, sapphire encrusted, silver ring on one of the leopard's fingers. "Who's your mate," she inquired.

"He's a polar bear," the doctor said as if it wasn't one of the strangest things one could say.

"Boris?" Krystal asked, hearing the x-ray machine click as it took pictures of her aching ribs. _This doctor is my size, that bear is probably more than three times her size._

"Yeah," the leopard confirmed, "You've met him?"

"Only briefly before he threw me like a kid's toy."

The leopards expression turned to one of annoyance. "So the commander put you up against Boris?"

Krystal nodded.

"I apologize for Boris, he sometimes forgets that not everyone can take the punishment he can. He's a great guy, really, but the commander should've known what to expect if he put you in there with him. I'll give them both a talking to." The leopard told her to sit back on the table as she left to get the x-rays developed.

Krystal didn't have to wait long before the door slid open again and the doctor walked back, followed closely by a walking wall of flesh. Boris the polar bear had to duck down to get through the doorway of the office. Even without his armor, his figure hadn't diminished much. His exposed arms were thick with muscle and various fur tattoos ran the length of them. Fur tattoos generally worked by permanently dying the hair follicles so that hair from that area grew as a different color. She had been tattooed with the royal markings when she was young, back on Cerinia.

The big bear dominated the room, "sorry if I got a little rough out there today," the bear spoke in his deep, sincere voice. "Once that adrenaline starts pumping, I sometimes forget my own strength."

"It's alright," she assured the bear, "It was a simulation and worse stuff could happen in the field, I need to be ready for it."

The leopard was studying the x-rays as the bear kissed the top of her head and retreated from the room.

"It doesn't look like you broke or fractured any of them," she concluded, "it's most likely bruised muscle tissue."

A sharp knock on the door interrupted her. As she went to the door, Krystal saw that the knocker was Wolf. The doctor stepped outside and closed the door. The shut door didn't stop Krystal from hearing the conversation on the other side.

"What were you thinking, putting someone up against Boris on their second day here?"

"She handled it, she beat him didn't she?" The gruff voice of Wolf shot back.

"Yeah, but it could have been a lot worse, I've seen your training areas. With all of that debris around, she easily could've fracture a skull or broken her neck." The doctor, surprisingly, was not one of the many people who backed down from Wolf

"I know what I'm doing, from what I know, she's been through tougher shit than a training fight with Boris. I run this place doc, and people get hurt, that's the way this business goes, and if people didn't get hurt , you wouldn't have a job. So is she good to go or not?"

"It looks like bruised muscle, maybe bruised ribs. It'll be painful for her to do much for about a week I'd say, even with painkillers."

"But she can't hurt it anymore just by doing things, right?"

"Well technically no, bruised ribs are just as strong as healthy ones, but a hit to her left side would be very painful and excessive movement of that side would be as well."

Wolf strode into the room, the doctor following him.

"How ya feelin'?" He asked in his naturally abrasive manner.

"Pretty good, I guess," she informed him.

"You up for more?"

Krystal could tell be his speech that this was another one of his tests, _If I say that I can't train because of some bruises then there's no way I'll make the team. _"I'm good to go."

"Atta girl," Wolf laughed, ignoring the snow leopard glaring at his back. "You get today off, training tomorrow, and another test the day after that."

After Wolf turned and left the room, the leopard handed Krystal a bottle of pills. "They're painkillers, take two every 6 hours until the bruises heal. Be careful here, these guys play rough."

Krystal thanked the doc before heading to the Star Wolf lounge for some lunch. Wolf liked to do his tests early in the morning, right after breakfast. Her stomach loudly protested its hunger as she headed for the Star Wolf elevator.

The lounge was an amusing sight, as the cooks at Sargasso delivered the same amount of food regardless of how many people were even around to eat it. Currently only Panther sat at the table eating from a pile of what appeared to be almost 40 sandwiches.

"What do they do with all of the uneaten food?" She asked as she plopped down in a chair and reached for one of the sandwiches.

"They put them in the break room for the other guys," Panther answered. "How did my beautiful, blue, rose do in Wolf's test this morning?"

"I seem to recall telling you that I wasn't interested, Panther," she shot back with a smirk, "I'd hate to have to re-iterate the point with my fist."

"Ah, but then you might risk damaging one of your exquisite hands, besides, I've been described as persistent so I shall stay faithful until you come around, you are, of course worth the wait."

"Faithful huh?" Krystal stared at him, "Is that why REX let me in here last night, because I told him I was another one of your ladies-of-the-night. From his tone, one would think that it's a regular occurrence for you."

"Ah, well, yeah, about that," Krystal could tell that Panthers skin had turned red under his black fur, "Well, how did your test go?" He changed the subject away from his off-duty activities.

"Alright, It guess. I had to deal with Gregor for a while but then Wolf swapped him out for Boris and I managed to finish it. Well, mostly, Wolf shot me after that but I'm not sure what to make of it."

Panther had frozen, about to put another sandwich in mouth, "You beat Boris?" His tone indicated that he didn't believe it. "Boris only ever gets beat by Wolf, he's one of the best people Wolf has in his employment, hell, if he could fit in a Wolfen then he'd already be on the team."

"Yeah, but he did manage to throw me pretty good, I have today off and it's back to it tomorrow. What's with all of the on-foot training anyway, I wanted to join so I could fly."

"I can't believe that you beat Boris, all I get when I fight him is a good helping of bruises and a face full of paint. Well, you'll probably do your flight test last, Wolf's doing all of the on-foot stuff because he wants us to be more versatile. He's worried that if we're just pilots, then we'll die off as a business."

Krystal nodded as she moved to the fridge, looking for something to wash down the sandwiches, she didn't know what was in them, but she was hungry and they weren't bad. The fridge was a strange sight, half full of unmarked, brown, glass bottles, and half full of water bottles.

As she stood, staring at the two sets of identical beverages, a grey, clawed paw reached around her and grabbed three of the glass bottles. "It's Katinan root beer," Wolf informed her "probably the only thing worth drinkin' in the whole damn galaxy."

She turned to see that Leon had showed up with Wolf and she couldn't be sure but she almost sensed an uneasy tension between the chameleon and the wolf. _Weird, they've disagreed before, but I don't think they've acted like this before, granted I've only known them for less than two days, still it seems weird._

She grabbed one of the glass bottles and headed back to the lounge table. She instantly got a whiff of the strong aroma of the drink as she pried the cap off of the bottle. Taking a drink, she could understand why it was the only other thing to drink besides water, it was delicious. It was definitely a drink that one could savor.

The Star Wolf team didn't stay in the lounge long though, and soon Krystal was alone in the plush room. She stood, and crossed the room to look out of the large window, _Some view_, she thought as the countless asteroids tumbled randomly around outside. It didn't take long for staring into space to give her the longing for flight. Crazy ideas started to enter her head that involved stealing a fighter and going out.

_No, if you stole a fighter, they'd shoot you down for sure. _The urge to be in a cockpit was too much for her to resist however and soon she found herself sneaking through a less populated area of the base towards the only hanger she hadn't been in already, it had to be the Star Wolf personal hanger, she assumed.

Her assumptions were all but confirmed when she caught sight of the double doors that led to the hanger. A large red wolf's head had been painted on the on the two doors. In the middle of the wolf's head sat a black, five pointed star.

_It sort of speaks for itself I guess, _she thought while looking at the large emblem that she assumed was Star Wolf's equivalent to the winged fox of Star Fox. _I haven't seen it anywhere else around here though, and I don't remember it being on their ships._

Not sensing anyone in the hanger beyond, she opened one of the doors and slipped silently inside. The room was pitch black once the door closed behind her. She blindly groped the wall next to the door, searching for a light switch of some kind. Her paw wrapped around a large, heavy switch, the kind that controlled a very large amount of electrical current.

Not feeling any other switches near the door she risked flipping the heavy handle. The switch completed the circuit and the huge racks of floodlights bolted to the wall illuminated the hanger in their white light. Directly in front of her, she recognized the three custom fighters of Star Wolf, sitting on magnetic catapults aimed at a massive set of steel bulkhead doors. The doors would open when everyone in the hanger was in a ship so that the ships could be launched into space. She crossed the open space and started admiring the three distinct ships up close.

The ship on the far left had a very strange appearance , like an origami creation. It didn't have the distinct sword-like wings of the original Wolfen, but had wide, triangular wings in a similar position to those on a regular Wolfen. She deduced that the larger surface of the wings would give the fighter more maneuverability but the added weight would slow its top speed down. The words **BLACK ROSE** were printed under the cockpit and she recognized that this must be Panthers fighter.

The middle craft looked out of place in between the two other fighters, where as the other two kept the four, forward swept wings, the middle had two, blade-like swept wings. It almost resembled a more aggressive Arwing. **RAINBOW DELTA** was printed under its tinted canopy. The ship was apparently geared towards a dog fighting role and she knew that Leon piloted this craft very well from what she seen in the Anglar invasion.

The final ship in the line was all too recognizable. The ship had the standard Wolfen layout of this series. From what Krystal understood, the Star Wolf team upgraded to a newer but still mostly identical group of fighters every few years. If she remembered correctly, this line was the Mark III line. **RED FANG** was printed underneath the angular canopy.

Walking around Wolf's fighter, Krystal noticed several more fighters parked haphazardly on the other side of the hanger as well as several tarps that hung from the ceiling, separating a section of the hanger form the rest of it. She walked over the collection of obviously older starships.

She recognized some of them from pictures and videos on the Great Fox. The four grey, bulky fighters were the Wolfen Mark Is. They were Star Wolf's first group of ships and were roughly equal to the original Arwings. She didn't recognize the two fighters parked in the corner however. They were multi-colored and made out of a metal that seemed to bend and reflect light in strange ways, giving them the appearance of constantly shimmering. They also possessed a 5 wing layout that required them to be lifted off of the ground as one of the wings stuck straight down. One of the fighters had obviously been cannibalized for parts as its bottom was open and wires hung out like the intestines of a disemboweled bird.

Next to the outdated ships, another Wolfen Mark III sat, gathering dust. She guessed that this one was Pigma's or Andrew's as one of theirs was probably taken by Panther when he joined. The canopy sat open unlike the other fighters and wheeled staircase was pushed up against the ship allowing access to the cockpit.

Checking to make sure that she was still alone in the hanger, she climbed the stairs and stepped into the cockpit of a Wolfen for her first time. She noticed while settling into the pilot's seat that, although the layout was very similar to the Arwing, the whole cockpit gave off a much more aggressive feeling. The angular lines of the interior gave her the sense of being in combat already and she could almost see an enemy ship her sights right now. Feeling her paws instinctively wrap around the flight stick in-between her knees and the throttle control to her left. She sat like that for a while, comfortable in the cockpit of an expensive war machine. Thinking about all of it, she started to wonder if some of her love of flying was the combat involved, _I mean, if I just loved flying, wouldn't I have tried to find an airline job, _she thought back to her performance in the shooting range earlier, and all of the fighting she did back on Sauria. _Maybe I do like to fight. _

Pushing the thoughts to the back of her mind for now, she climbed out of the cockpit and was about to head out of the hanger before catching sight of the tarped-in area of the hanger. Where two tarps met at what was apparently the entrance, a sign labeled **KEEP OUT** was hung on the tarp.

_It's not worth it Krystal, _she mentally scolded herself, _if someone finds you snooping behind a tarp labeled 'keep out' they'll be even more suspicious than they already are._ She stood, staring at the tarps. Checking to see that the hanger was still abandoned, she decided to risk a look. She crossed the hanger and carefully pulled the tarp back and stepped inside.

A Wolfen sat in the center of the temporary room. This Wolfen was different from the others that she had just seen though. This Wolfen appeared to be much more advanced than the others in the hanger. It was obviously bigger, maybe one and a half, to two times the size of a Wolfen Mark I. It's two distinctive, sharp beak-like sections that made up the front of the ship were painted a dark, non-reflective black and its wings were silver and resembled four giant swords. The impressive fighter was obviously incomplete though as it was missing some key pieces, like engines and weaponry. Several cables connected the cockpit to a small, portable terminal that sat near the very violent looking ship.

Looking at the display screen, she saw the planned blueprints for the finished ship labeled **WOLFEN MARK IV. **_So this is the next iteration of the Wolfens._

She clicked 'next' on the terminal and the screen switched to a page of notes typed about the ship, they seemed to be spontaneous ideas and thoughts on the nearby ship. They talked about the estimated top speed of the ship, as well as its modular construction, allowing for easy modification and customizations to be made by its pilots.

Clicking 'next' again, the screen switched to a diagram of the Wolfen Mark IV next to a diagram of what she recognized as the futuristic, 5 winged fighters she had seen in the hanger, the ship was labeled **WOLFEN II**. Underneath their respective pictures, tables showed comparisons of their capabilities. She noticed that the older Wolfen II outperformed the Wolfen Mark IV in several key areas, but as a pilot she recognized that some of the Wolfen II's abilities were more than a pilot could use without protective equipment. It's turn radius at top speed was especially low and would cause a pilot to black out if they attempted such a maneuver. The Wolfen Mark IV appeared to push the boundaries of what a pilot could handle, but stayed in the safe zone for the most part.

Krystal's heart skipped a beat as she heard the safety catch of a blaster being flipped behind her. Turning around, she came face to face with the business end of Wolf's custom blaster, it's sharp bayonet just inches from her nose. Wolf's blaster was modified to shoot thick bolts of plasma, which reduced its effective range but made it a very powerful weapon. At this range, it would remove her head from her shoulders for sure.

"W-Wolf," she stammered, "This isn't what it looks like!"

The wolf's one eye glared coldly at her, a far cry from the almost prideful look it held after her test this morning. His lips pulled back to show his sharp fangs, "Oh really? Well help me out here, 'cause from where I'm standin' it looks pretty fuckin' bad for you!" His voice wasn't its usual gruff tone, but had taken on a snarl.

She honestly couldn't think of what to say to explain her being in here looking at the data on Wolf's classified new fighter. Her silence seemed to provoke the angry wolf even more.

"Leon was right, you're a fuckin' spy, sent here to find out what I'm up to for McCloud, tell me, how long did it take you to come up with that sob story you fed us? I knew he didn't have the balls to drop a pretty thing like you on the street!" Wolf pulled the hammer back on the blaster and Krystal heard the plasma hum quietly as it warmed.

Krystal flinched involuntarily, but as her eyes clamped shut, she got a read on Wolf's aura. It was violent twister of deep red and purple. That confused her because, whereas red indicated anger, which was obvious, purple was the feeling betrayal. The pieces fell into place, something in Wolf's past had caused him to have serious trust issues. Therefore, when someone earned his trust and broke it, it was especially hard on him.

_He must have trusted Pigma once, and when he broke that trust it didn't end well, _she thought to herself, remembering the assault that Wolf had launched on the pig years ago. _So I must have earned his trust somewhat in my few days here, he must have believed me, but catching me here broke that._

She opened her eyes to see that Wolf hadn't moved, the large blaster still hummed as she looked down the barrel. Her mind raced trying to figure out the troubled mind of the grizzled, grey wolf, normally she's apologize or let herself cry in an emotional display, but from what she saw in her vision in Pigma's room, it would only anger him more. She saw Panther and Leon step into the tarp room behind Wolf, Leon regarded her with his usual cold distrust but Panther's eyes only showed hurt.

She knew that there was only way out of this that might let her keep her life and possibly let her keep her possible spot on the team. She'd have to do the one thing that Wolf would respect, she'd have to fight him. Wolf was a warrior and he only respected the strong, as Peppy had told her, he hated the weak.

Moving as fast as her athletic body could, she dropped her head and tackled Wolf with all her might. He was obviously caught off guard and tumbled backwards with Krystal on top of him. Hitting the ground, he wasted no time in kneeing her in the stomach and rolling to a kneel. He tried to bring the gun up on her but she recovered to fast and spun, kicking the blaster from his hand. He snarled loudly and extended his razor sharp claws, flexing them menacingly.

Panther and Leon ran out of the tarp room and Leon was reaching for the blaster on his hip.

"No," Wolf stopped him with a snarl, "This bitch is mine!"

He charged her his usual fighting stance, he kept his body low and his claws ready in front of him. He fought in a balls out, all-aggressive style that was very effective in one on one combat. Krystal just focused on avoiding the flying claws and keeping her skin intact. Seeing that fighting hand to hand with Wolf in the open was a death wish, Krystal retreated carefully into the haphazardly parked group of Wolfens and Wolfen IIs.

Wolf followed her, slashing wildly, before slipping on a slick of oil that had accumulated near the one of the old Wolfens. She saw the opening and kicked him hard under the chin as he stumbled forward. His head snapped back violently from the impact, but he quickly recovered and lashed out with a powerful punch to her stomach. She reeled back from the impact and stumbled underneath the gutted Wolfen II. She heard her foot kick something metal and glanced down to see what it was. It was metal pipe that must have been used as a cable channel in the Wolfen II's interior. Grabbing it, she found it to be close to the length and weight of her staff.

Wolf had raised himself back to his feet after the kick but Krystal was ready for him, and she was now armed. Wolf glanced at the pipe she wielded and smirked. "Think that'll save ya'?"

Krystal stepped out from under the ship and the fight continued. Krystal was using the staff in a very defensive style, poking and jabbing at her clawed attacker to keep him at bay. Wolf rushed her, batting the offending pole away with his hand and brought his claws across her stomach.

Yelping in pain, she rolled back and put her paw to the four parallel wounds across her belly. Somehow it seemed to just be a flesh wound and she didn't think that he managed to puncture any of her organs, but the slashes combined with her already bruised ribs were making all of her movements very painful. She brought herself back up and went on the defensive again, not seeing any openings in Wolf's stance for a counter attack. Wolf, however, obviously remembered her previous injury and attacked it with his next move, grapping her staff, he pulled himself closer to her. He then jumped, twisted, and delivered a devastating kick to her left ribs. This time she wasn't so lucky as she heard two distinct cracks come from her ribs.

Krystal was getting desperate, she had challenged Wolf to a fight but so far he was slaughtering her, and if it went on like this for much longer, he could very easily kill her. For some reason, her mind went back to her fight earlier in the day with Boris. _Panther said that all of his tests have multiple lessons in them, what was he trying to teach me in that fight. _Thinking back, she realized that if she had try to stay on the defensive in that room, she would have been easy prey for the bear, she only managed to beat him by taking the fight to him and exploiting his weakness. _Of course, when the odds are against you, the best defense is a carefully executed offense. _

She picked herself up off of the hanger floor and readied herself for another onslaught from the sharp claws. Wolf charged her again with both claws extended, instead of backing away from them, this time she spun the staff while stepping into Wolf's attack, knocking his arms away from her body. She followed by bringing the pole around and smashing it into the wolf's face.

Wolf grunted in pain and spat blood on the floor of his hanger. He brought his head up and Krystal saw murder in his eyes. _He thinks that I'm fighting in order to escape, my only hope is to beat him and stay, proving that I don't want to go back to Star Fox. If I lose though, I'm dead. _The plan sounded crazier now.

Wolf charged her with even more ferocity this time, but she exploited his eagerness for her blood once again, spinning out of reach and bringing the staff down on his extended ankle. Krystal heard the bones in the joint snap as Wolf crumpled to the ground with his wounded joint. She could see that he had very little control over that foot and must have been in extreme pain. Still he raised himself and stepped heavily on the fractured ankle, grimacing but obviously deciding that it was still useable, he dropped into his combat stance again. Krystal looked down and noticed that the blood coming out of her stomach wounds had dripped onto the floor, leaving a slick, red patch. _If this keeps going, I'll drop dead from blood loss._

Wolf charged her again and she prepared to counter his attack again, he stopped short, though, as she brought the staff up, catching it in his hand. He tried to wrench it out of her hand but she held on and put as much pressure on the pipe as she could, feeling her torn stomach protesting. She saw a stress fracture form in the middle of the pipe and soon it snapped into two, sharp ended, pieces of pipe. Wolf was caught off balance by the sudden break and stumbled slightly, she saw it coming though and lunged at him. He couldn't recover fast enough as she closed the gap and sliced the sharp end of the pipe across his chest.

Wolf grunted as his flesh parted and smacked her across the head with his own piece of pipe, splitting the skin under her ear. She stumbled backwards, careful to step over the slick of blood on the smooth steel floor of the hanger. Wolf pressed on and hadn't noticed the slick patch in his path. Wolf stepped heavily on the blood slick with his wounded ankle and the damaged joint gave, sending him sprawling onto his front next to her. Grasping her sharp length of pipe, she brought it down hard, high on his good leg. The pipe pierced his meaty haunch and only stopped when it hit the floor on the other side.

The battle-hardened lupine let out an anguished howl of pain as Krystal stumbled backwards, growing weak from the loss of blood. She leaned up against one of the old Wolfens for support as she watched the wounded wolf. He tried to get his feet under him, but his ankle had obviously stopped responding, and his impaled leg was sluggishly trying to lift him up. He almost got up on one knee but stepped on his own blood patch from the leg wound and fell back down.

Leon and Panther watched on in shock as their leader stopped trying to continue the fight and just lay there, breathing heavily.

He raised his head to glare at her with his one eye, it widened to see that she had found his blaster and had it aimed at his head.

Krystal glanced over at Leon and Panther but neither of them had reached for their own weapons, they were to shocked by what they were seeing to do much of anything.

"Go ahead, do it," Wolf coughed, spitting more blood onto the floor, "Do it or just get the fuck out of here and tell that prick McCloud that you beat me too." The wolf had accepted the apparent finality of his situation.

Krystal slumped to the floor, her body too weak to stand, propping herself up against the landing gear of the Wolfen.

"No," she sighed, tossing the blaster within reach of Wolf's claw, "I already told you, I don't have anywhere to go. So you do it, end my miserable life, everything else has already been taken from me."

Krystal watched as the wolf considered grabbing the gun, before rolling over onto his back. "What the fuck are you two gawkin' at, call the fucking doctor," he barked at the two other pilots.

It was the last thing that she heard before she blacked out.

* * *

There, hopefully you can appreciate a chapter that actually has something happen in it. I enjoyed writing it, I hope you enjoyed reading it.

The next one is another short Wolf chap, but I'll probably have another long one up in like 3 days or so.

Oh yeah, and if you didn't really catch on, the new, incomplete Wolfen Mark IV is the Wolfen from Star Fox Assault. Due to the graphics, that one appears far more advanced than the ones in command, so I decided that it should be a new one.


	5. Saurian safari

Wolf lay on his side on a cot in the medical ward of the Sargasso base. They had to work down here, because his private doctor's office wasn't equipped to deal with the extent of damage he and Krystal had sustained. He was only wearing his boxers as they had to cut his pants off and take his shirt off to get a look at his injuries.

"I hope you like pain commander," Sydney stated, the snow leopard obviously had bad news for him.

"I was worried you might say that," He grumbled, "What's up?"

"The way that this pipe in your leg here broke, If we pull it out, it's just going to cause more trauma. you might bleed out before we could patch you up. We're going to have to push it out from this side, and I'm going to have to go slow to make sure that I keep it straight."

"Fuckin' great."

"Ready?" she inquired, "Try not to move." She began pushing the pipe through his thigh.

"Arrrrgh, damn it!" Wolf yelled, digging in claws into the mattress he was laying on.

"Halfway there," Sydney assured him, moving around to his front side to pull the pipe the rest of the way out.

Wolf fought the blackness that crept in from the corners of his vision, his mind was trying to shut down to avoid the pain, _Fuck no you don't, _Wolf mentally yelled at himself. He let out one more gasp of pain the rod slipped free of his leg.

"Hmm, I don't like the look of that," Sydney stated calmly, "It looks like you have some grease or something in the wound track, we'll have to clean it. Boris!"

The massive polar bear lumbered over from the other side of the long medical ward, "You called?"

"Take the commander to the wash tub."

"alright, let's go boss," the big bear said as he picked Wolf up from the bed, cradling him like a newlywed bride.

"Thanks, hun," Wolf responded sarcastically, wincing as the bear set him in a tub of warm, soapy water. The cleaning chemicals and disinfectant in the water stung the gaping hole in his leg.

"Alright, move your leg around and try and get the water moving through it, hopefully that, plus your bleeding, will clear the wound."

After a minute in the tub, his blood had tinged the water a medium pink. He lifted his leg out of the water to Sydney could get a look at the wound.

"Looks good," she assured him, shining her small flashlight into the hole. "Clean your chest up before you get out."

Wolf looked down, having almost forgotten the slash across his chest. The pain from his leg wound had taken up most of focus up until this point. The long slash had already slowed to a few trickles of blood, but his chest and stomach fur was matted down with caked blood. Splashing water on his front, he scrubbed his fur clean of the coagulated blood, turning the water a deep red. Once he was satisfied that he was mostly clean, he motioned for Boris to carry him back over to the bed.

Once back on the bad, Sydney set to bandaging his wounds and setting his fractured ankle, rubbing a generous amount of regena-gel, a green tinted salve that accelerated the natural healing process of the body, on all of his wounds. With this treatment, he could be good to go in 3-5 days, instead of the 2-3 weeks that he might have needed regularly. Once he was patched up, Boris moved him over to a less blood soaked bed where he could rest.

Looking over, he saw Krystal in the bed next to him. Although she had received medical attention first and was all patched up, she still had yet to regain consciousness and an iv bag fed blood into her arm.

Boris left the medical ward and Sydney sat on the bed next to Wolf, on the other side of him from Krystal.

"Help me out here commander," she obviously wasn't pleased with the situation.

"What?" Wolf played dumb just to annoy her.

"You both could easily have died without proper medical care, she was real close. It's her second day here and you've almost killed her. But, she also did a number on you and since you're both still alive, I'm a bit lost as to what the overall point of this violence was."

"There was a bit of a misunderstanding regarding her motives here at the base, but she showed me that they were unfounded." Wolf looked back over at Krystal's unconscious frame. _You certainly proved yourself in there._

"So I can leave you two in here without you picking the fight up again , right?" Sydney obviously had better things to do with her time than babysit her superior officer and the recruit in training.

"Yeah, we're fine," Wolf assured her.

Sydney walked over and checked Krystal's vitals before nodding, "She's stable, I'd guess that she'll be awake within half an hour, given the amount of blood loss."

"Where'd you get the blood?" he gestured at the iv bag connected to Krystal's arm

"It's mine, luckily we're the same blood type. How's your insomnia going?"

"Eh, not so good, and after this, I don't know if I'll get to sleep for a while."

"Hmm, you need some rest, especially in your condition," she was looking through a glass cabinet on the wall, eventually grabbing a bottle and filling a syringe with the clear liquid. "This is a powerful sedative, the medics use it to put you out if they have to saw your leg off or something. This stuff will knock you out hard. Sleep tight," she smiled as she shot the contents of the syringe into his arm.

It didn't take long after Sydney had left for his body to start to feel heavy. He didn't fight the feeling as he welcomed the oncoming rest. His eye drooped lower, before finaly slamming shut.

The loud rumbling of a crude, fuel burning engine focused him. He was sitting in the commander's seat of a Venomian V-37 main battle tank, the Venomian Army's answer to the Cornerian Landmaster tank. The heavy vehicle was geared more towards tank-on-tank combat, but was still somewhat inferior to a Landmaster.

The tank cleared the top of a hill, giving Wolf a view of the open plain that lay before him. His torso stuck out of the domed turret, there was no need to be inside the cramped, armored hull at the moment.

He had been walking ahead of the vehicle earlier, but a close encounter with some sort of flying predator had forced him inside the tank. He looked down at the semi-circle bite pattern that covered his side, the teeth had penetrated his armored vest and would probably leave scars, but nothing major for him. Although, now he was glad that they had the tank.

All four of the Star Wolf members were crammed into the tank that had been designed with only a three man crew in mind. Beside Wolf, sticking up from the gunner's hatch, was Pigma, Andrew was driving, and Leon was scrunched uncomfortably behind the driver's seat.

They were on Sauria, taking a top secret contract from Andross himself. The crazed monkey was supposed to be dead after the Lylat wars and Wolf was still unsure what was going on. He hadn't even wanted to take the job, but Pigma wanted the money, a very large sum from Andross' remaining fortune. Andrew also pushed to take the job out of loyalty to his uncle. Even Leon was quick to point out that they were running short of funds and needed a big job to stay in business. Still, he was less than happy about the situation.

Roughly a week prior, Andross contacted them out of the blue, after eight years of his supposed corpse time. He told them that he needed their help with an off-the-radar black op. When Wolf questioned him as to why he was calling the mercenaries that he had hired during the war, instead of the soldiers that he must of had laying around somewhere, Andross fed him some bullshit about how they had proved their loyalty by staying on the falling Venom and fighting Star Fox. He got even more evasive when Wolf pressed him on the job, only getting assurance that he would know more in good time.

So know he sat at the coordinates given to him by Andross and waited for him to contact them. The monkey head was on the planet's surface somewhere, telling Wolf only that he had some personal matters to attend to as well as some "unfinished business" to take care of. Wolf didn't like any of it.

On the far side of the clearing that the idling tank overlooked, a crack formed in ground, slowly widening as molten magma began seeping out as if the planet had been wounded in some way.

"Commander," a very artificial and annoying voice came up from the hatch, "I am receiving a message from Andross."

_And there's another pain in my butt, _Andross had ordered them to take along one of his pet projects, an Artificial Intelligence being that called itself AI-REX-003. Andross had apparently designed them as artificial brains that learned their tasks quickly and efficiently, this made them very versatile and they could easily specialize at certain jobs , this one had yet to prove useful though.

He dropped back into the tank and shielded his eyes from the bright hologram. It took on a visible form of a glowing ball of hazy white light and it hurt to look at it directly in the dark interior of the combat vehicle.

"Just put him on already, " he growled

The ball faded and was replaced by the floating head and hands of Andross, albeit much smaller than he was during the Lylat wars. With his now very mobile lifestyle, he must have decided that the whole being giant thing was overrated.

"Have you reached your target?" the floating head demanded.

"Yeah, we've been sitting here for a good half hour already," Wolf shot back. "What took ya so long."

"Oh, I just dealt with an old friend, and met a new one."Andross replied in a cold manner.

"Yeah, whatever, what are our orders?"

"Up ahead and to the east, the Earthwalkers have a large fortress called the Walled City. Inside, they keep a species, known as the RedEye, captive out of fear. Feeling a kinship with a people who are locked away by a group with a superiority complex and a fear of that which is actually superior to them, I want you to free the oppressed Saurians. You get to play liberator for once Star Wolf."

"So, what, you want us to single handedly assault a fortress and open up its prison gates?"

"Yes, and don't worry, the creatures on this planet are far less advanced than we are, the tank I loaned you will be more than enough to deal with any resistance that you may encounter."

"Alright, what's our exit plan?"

"I'll bring the shuttle down in the clearing once I see that you have completed your mission." Andross abruptly ended the transmission and blinked out of view.

"Wolf," he heard Pigma grunt, "somethin's goin' on down there."

Wolf climbed back into his seat and stuck his torso out of the turret. Below them, in the clearing, a large, green Saurian was fleeing from several smaller ones.

"REX, what am I seeing here?" Wolf inquired, feeling the turret rotate as REX commandeered the gun sight to "see" what was supposed to.

"My databases indicate that the large one is a RedEye, and the smaller ones are Earthwalkers. He must have managed to somehow escape the Walled City."

The large RedEye turned on his pursuers and roared fiercely, trying to deter his pursuers. The smaller Earthwalkers had him outnumbered though, and they knew it. Walking backwards, the RedEye was getting dangerously close to the still seeping stream of magma. Suddenly, the ground beneath his foot gave way and he tumbled into the scorching pool.

The creature thrashed on his side in the lava pool before managing to roll out of it. As it got back on its massive feet, Wolf saw that the entire side of its body had been badly burned by the magma, and he didn't see how the fearsome predator was even still alive. The RedEye gave one last roar before turning and fleeing at full speed back into the forest.

The Earthwalkers must have been convinced that the large burnt Saurian wouldn't last long as the turned and started walking back the way they had came.

"REX, get me an aerial shot of the area and find that fortress," Wolf ordered.

"Yes, commander," the reply came, but it wasn't spoken in the AI's mechanical, false voice. It had taken on a deep, dark tone.

A bird's-eye picture of the surrounding area popped into his view, a red dot where one could easily make out the round, walled form of a city. The map faded and REX popped up in its place, but he didn't have his old ball-of-light appearance. He now had apparently assume the form of the badly burnt Redeye. "Do you need anything else Commander?" He spoke in his new dark voice, "I'm needed back on the shuttle."

"You can go," he informed the now scary looking AI, _why would he chose that Saurian as an appearance? _Wolf decided that it wasn't worth dwelling on as it probably had an explanation rooted deep in the AI's programming that only Andross would really understand.

Wolf plopped the commander's helmet on his head so he could talk to Andrew over the tank's noisy engine. "Andrew, head in the direction that those Saurians were headed, it looks like flat ground all the way there, watch for fissures though." Wolf sat lower in his seat and closed the hatch over his head, Pigma followed suit and took his position behind the sight and trigger for the tank's main gun.

Andrew put the hammer down and the heavily armored vehicle lurched forward, its engine roaring loudly. They rolled down the steep hill and began speeding across the plain towards the great, walled city. Wolf looked through the commander's sight and saw the massive, wooden gate of the city looming in the distance, the range-finder read that the target was a little over a mile away and they were closing fast.

"Pigma," He barked into the mic attached to his helmet, "Aim for the doors." He waited a few moments before yelling, "Fire!"

The slow firing gun bucked in its mounting as it sent a heavy blaster bolt screaming towards its target. Wolf watched in satisfaction as the round slammed into the right door, blowing it off of its hinges.

"Hit, put another shot into the left door."

The gun bucked again as the second round also found its mark, reducing the wood to splinters.

"Two hits, good shooting Pigma." They were almost in the shadow of the huge wall of the city now. _How do four legged dinosaurs even build something like this, _Wolf couldn't help but contemplate the mystery of it all.

A wall of Earthwalkers had formed up in front of the smashed doors to their city. As the tank bore down on them at full speed, they collectively charged, not realizing that the tank was almost 50 tons of metal and had a 1,000 horsepower fuel burning engine. Nature met machine as the tank and several Earthwalkers met head-on. The large Saurians didn't even have an impact on the tank as it bowled through them. Wolf hit his helmeted head on the ceiling as one of the unfortunate Earthwalkers was sucked under the spinning treads."For Andross!" Wolf heard Andrew yell.

The tank slowed to a stop as a particularly large Earthwalker stood between them and the prison.

Wolf guessed, by his size and the two guards that flanked him, that this was the leader of these Saurians.

The large creature began speaking, but he couldn't make out a single word, _must be a different language or somethin', _he figured. He deduced from the tone of the Earthwalker's voice that the Suarian was pleading, for what, he didn't know, probably to end the violence or something.

Wolf popped out of the hatch and the Saurian looked startled, as if he had assumed that the tank was a living thing. Wolf gestured to the large prison and made a door opening gesture with his hands.

The king's eyes went wide as he caught the meaning of the hand motions. He shook his head quickly, before Pigma leveled the cannon at the Earthwalker's large head. The king remained defiant and stood tall when faced with the possibility of death. Pigma was thinking faster than Wolf though and rotated the turret, bringing the gun to bear on a small, Earthwalker youngling. The small Saurian cried and peed on the spot out of fear.

Wolf felt a pang of pity in his heart for the small creature, _A mission's a mission, _he reminded himself, _we won't have to do anything if the king here just backs down. _Wolf silently urged the king to do so.

The king Earthwalker looked painfully at the scared youth, before bowing his head and nodding slowly. He let out a bellow and all of the Earthwalkers hesitated before they turned and began leaving the city. He waited until they had all left and it was just him left, before turning and walking slowly towards the large prison. He reached the gate and looked back a Wolf pleadingly. Wolf's stone cold glare showed that he wasn't relenting and the king turned back towards the gate.

The king used his nose to turn a large winch that lifted the massive prison gate up off the ground. Wolf saw that inside the prison there was a large courtyard with many RedEye milling about in it. They stopped in their tracks as they noticed that the gate had been raised. Wolf looked down at the king and gestured into the prison. The king only looked down as he slowly walked into the prison that was his responsibility to keep closed. Several RedEye took menacing steps towards the king, their long tongues licking their very sharp, knife like teeth. The stopped as a deafening roar sounded from the back of the courtyard as a massive RedEye, easily several times bigger than the rest, stepped into view.

The huge Saurian looked down at the king Earthwalker before letting out a deep and cruel laugh. He roared again and the RedEyes poured out of the prison, walking by on either side of the tank.

Wolf decided that this was as good a time as any to get out of dodge, so he ordered Andrew to turn the tank around and head for the landing zone. Wolf watched as the RedEyes celebrated their newfound freedom by smashing the structures built by their oppressors. Wolf's mind couldn't help but think about the situation he viewed.

_This is Sauria, there is no technology, almost no war, it's a peaceful garden world, and yet, these destructive creature were born into a life of confinement, never to know a true life. Just because other viewed them as dangerous. The "good guys" justify jailing beings for who they are simply because they feel that they are the "Bad guys." These RedEyes are natural predators, they evolved that way and to survive they need to hunt and eat prey like these Earthwalkers. Their lifestyle isn't a sin, but locking them up for it sure is. _He, like Andross, also felt a certain kinship with these predators, who weren't even given a chance until now. He was somewhat glad that he actually helped restore some natural balance to this world.

Up ahead, he saw Andross' unassuming ship drop out of the sky and set down in the field. The cargo ramp lowered and Andrew drove the tank into the ship, the ramp closing behind them.

"Hello, commander," REX's new dark voice greeted them, "Was the mission a success?"

"Yeah, it was." Wolf confirmed.

"I'm sure that master Andross will be pleased with the news."

The Star Wolf team crawled out of the tank before securing it to the deck so it wouldn't shift around in flight.

"Well that was a huge waste of my time," Leon was clearly not happy and seemed to only be able to hunch over, unable to stand straight.

Wolf assumed that he had been curled in a awkward position for the several hours that they were in the tank and now his back had locked up, "Sorry about that Leon, but you did want to come along, go get some rest."

Leon grumbled as he headed into the main section of the ship, followed shortly after by his teammates. Wolf found Andross' floating head staring out of a viewport, watching Sauria as they pulled away. Suddenly, the planet seemed to warp unnaturally before blowing apart.

Wolf couldn't process what had just happened, the lush world that he had just driven a tank across now sat in several pieces.

"Wh-what.." He was slightly in shock from the suddenness of it all.

Andross just cackled next to him, rubbing his floating hands together maniacally.

"What the fuck was the point of the mission if you were just gonna' blow the whole damn thing up anyway?"

Andross seemed to barely register him anymore, "My reasons here are my own Wolf, but since your bleeding heart seems to care so deeply for the planet, know that most of the beings on it are still alive, however, unless the process is reversed the planet's remaining atmosphere will evaporate and all life will end here. Your part in this is over now, and I won't have you meddling with my plans. Here's where you get off."

A large lizard approached them from behind and dropped a large duffel bag near Wolf's feet.

"That's your payment, you won't be hearing from me again." Andross had finished with him and Wolf was fine with it.

He dug his paw deep in the bag and, satisfied that it wasn't loaded with low denomination chips, picked the bag up headed back to the cargo bay. The rest of Star Wolf waited for him, already geared up in space suits. Andross would open the cargo ramp near their ships that they had left parked out here in space. Wolf donned his suit and floated out of the ship with his teammates, taking one last look at the ship that held Andross.

_Good thing I'm done with him._

Wolf's eye shot open and was blinded by the bright fluorescent light over him. He sat up slowly, realizing that he was back in the medical ward of Sargasso.

_Why the fuck did I relive that moment again, _He wondered while massaging his sore leg. Looking over, he noticed that Krystal's turquoise blue eyes were open and watching him.

* * *

This was actually longer than I expected. Oh well, hope to have more up soon, but no promises as it's getting busy on my end.


	6. Melancholy Medbay

Woot, I got this one up before the weekend. Between my job picking up and college math, I've been a little busy. My class for the summer is almost though and that should clear some time up.

Warning: Watch for large blocks of text!

* * *

Krystal opened her eyes slowly, the ceiling tiles above her faded in and out of focus. She pulled herself into a sitting position, grunting as her lacerated stomach protested against all of the movement. Her head throbbed and she lifted her paw to gingerly touch the large lump that had formed where Wolf had clubber her with a piece of pipe. Looking over, she saw the grey lupine sleeping on the adjacent army cot, they were in what appeared to be a medical bay of some sort. But to say that Wolf was sleeping peacefully would be inaccurate, as she watched, his face periodically scrunched up and he occasionally mumbled something incoherent. Noticing that Wolf was wearing only a pair of grey boxers, she looked down at her own body. She wore only an average hospital gown which, though skimpy, still covered more than her old Cerinian garments.

She assumed that this was still Sargasso, although this room was far cleaner than most of the rusty space station. The med bay was a long, sterile-white, rectangular room with two rows of army cots, one up against each of the long walls and the air smelled heavily of disinfectant.

_Great, what am I supposed to do now, _she searched the room with her eyes for something to occupy her time, eventually spotting a large data-pad on laying on the small table in-between her and Wolf. The device was roughly the size of a clipboard and its entire front was a touch screen. Two wireless ear buds sat on top of it. _Hmm, what have we here? _

She picked the data-pad up carefully and slid the small headphones into her ears. The pad responded to her presence and booted up from its sleep mode. The screen displayed a list titled **Medical Files** with four pictures below it. The pictures were headshots of Wolf, Leon, Panther, and a less than flattering picture of her while she was unconscious. She tapped her picture and the screen quickly switched to a list of files. She tapped the file marked **X-RAYS. **

The screen went blank before loading a slideshow of her various x-rays. As she scrolled through them, she noticed that she now had a slightly higher metal composition than before her fight in the hanger. One of the slides showed a close-up of her skull, where a metal plate was visible, screwed into place over a crack in the skull wall. Another was a close-up of two curved plates that now made up the structural integrity of her two cracked ribs. She backed out of the x-rays and tapped the file marked **NOTES.**

Selecting the only file in the folder, the voice of Star Wolf's personal doctor came on over the tiny speakers in her ears._ What was her name again? _She didn't remember it ever coming up.

The voice began speaking "The commander and the new recruit apparently got into a bit of a scuffle in the hanger. Everyone's scarce on the details of the incident but, judging by the damage done to both of the patients, whatever happened was fairly serious. The recruit suffered two broken ribs,7th and 8th, a fractured skull below her ear, a result of some sort of blunt force trauma. She also had a severely lacerated stomach, weapon appears to be the commander's claws. All in all, the wounds caused severe blood loss, although no internal bleeding was detected. I managed to give her and iv of my own blood, as we share a blood type. The recruit easily could have been killed in the altercation, but surprisingly, she's the only person I've ever seen who's fought with the commander and come out with roughly equal damage when compared to him. I operated on the recruit while she was unconscious, although a risky procedure, I had to be sure that her ribs hadn't damaged any internal organs. After checking the organs, I mended the fractured skull and broken ribs with titanium plates screwed into the bones. They are strong enough to support everything on their own and will allow her to heal while still being active. The titanium isn't rejected by the body but they'll need to come out within twenty years. Recovery time is estimated at four or five days." The recording ended there.

She was about to set the pad aside before pausing. She backed out to the main menu and, glancing over at Wolf's still sleeping frame, tapped the picture of the Star Wolf commander. The file's size was far larger than hers and took several seconds before loading. She tapped the notes file and a list several entries long popped up. It seemed that it was organized newest on the top, oldest on the bottom. Scrolling down, she clicked on the first entry, it was marked **First Impressions. **The doctor's professional voice popped out of the ear buds once again.

"fifth month, twentieth day, seven years ALW. I have decided to record personal thoughts and medical data on this pad as a way to keep track of past threads of thought or ideas. This should help me as I try to deal with my new employer medically. I have been under new employment for under forty eight hours and I have already come to see my new boss as a very peculiar individual. Wolf O'Donnell is a name that the Lylat system has feared for over ten years now, he's a man of legend, the very mention of him is enough to cause most people to check over their shoulders. I never had any reason to fear him though, as I kept my nose clean and lived the life of an average doctor. It is strange now, I'm presumed dead in the system after the shuttle I was on was hijacked by pirates. Wolf saved my life and I was more than willing to volunteer my skills to him. He accepted and here I am, working on an old asteroid base filled with cutthroats and mercenaries. His image in the world outside this base is one of a demon, a ruthless murderer. Once you actually talk to him though, he comes off as just a man, a confident and charming man. Truly the image of the wolf and the real wolf are very different creatures. I have ordered a physical for him, so I know what I'm dealing with here." The recording ended and she tapped the next one up, marked **Post-physical 1.**

"I've just completed what is most likely the only full medical examination that the commander has ever encountered. The results are... interesting. He has definitely received a lot of punishment over his life, the scars and wounds are a testament to that. His left eye is missing, as are the eyelids on that socket, they appear to have been surgically removed, and that's the only evidence of an actual doctor's work on his body. He has several bones that were broken and then set poorly, resulting in a very rough heal. His scars seem to have been from wounds that were either not stitched or stitched poorly, these are consistent with medical care on the battlefield. X-rays reveal that the damage to his body goes deeper still. Several pieces of shrapnel seem to be embedded inside his body and all appear to be old. I called in the commander's arms dealer and expert in military weaponry to try and identify the pieces of metal. There were eight pieces of foreign material in his body and, with the help of the arms dealer and 3D modeling software, I managed to identify seven of the pieces. four are from a Cornerian C-50 fragmentation grenade, and the other three are from a Cornerian C-126 anti-tank missile. This all seems to support the idea that the commander's duties during the Lylat war extended beyond being a fighter pilot, as both of these weapons went out of use towards the end of the war. I'm ordering surgery to remove the shrapnel as I'm worried that they might shift and cause internal damage over time." Krystal jumped immediately into the file marked **Post-surgery 1.**

"The surgery was a success. In under four hours, I removed all eight pieces of shrapnel from the commander's torso. The seven that I previously identified were what I thought that they were, the eighth piece was strange however. It is a shard, wide on one end, tapering to a point on the other. It is two inches long and seems to be a composite made up of several layers of different metals. I took samples and identified that it is lead sandwiched between a steel alloy and a titanium alloy. It's good that I got this out of him, as the lead was probably already causing harm to his body. The piece of metal caused me some trouble when I tried to identify it, but I think that I did manage to get it, although there is no way to be absolutely sure. It seems to be a piece of the armored hull of a Venomian Army Ogre-type heavy transport. They're large, armored trucks that were used to carry sensitive material. The lead isn't present in the Ogre's standard armor though, so I believe that this particular truck was modified with the lead. The only reason to do something like that would be to keep radiation in or out of the vehicle. If it was to keep radiation out, then it might have been an advanced, forward control vehicle, designed to resist jamming or outside interference. If the opposite is true, well, the obvious implications are disturbing and it means that Wolf O'Donnell was next to or in a truck that was carrying nuclear materials. I've checked him for radiation or radiation damage in his body, but I came up with nothing. It is something to think about though. Radioactive materials have only two real uses today, medical equipment and power production. I doubt the commander was assigned to a medical convoy or a disposal convoy carrying spent nuclear fuel. The only other use would be fuel for nuclear weapons, something that I wouldn't put past Andross." Krystal was about to continue on when she heard Wolf stirring next to her.

She quickly pulled the ear buds out and set the pad back on the table and watched Wolf as he sat up and rubbed his wounded leg. _Well, now we find out what my attack on the system's most feared man earned me._

Wolf finished massaging his wounded leg and turned to look at her, her turquoise eyes making contact with his purple one and an open socket.

"You look like shit," Wolf grumbled as he slid a cloth eye patch over his open hole.

"I think that I could probably say the same," Krystal shot back.

Wolf crossed his arms and stared, blankly, at the wall for several moments, before turning back to her, "What the fuck were ya' doin' in my hanger?"

"I miss flying," she answered honestly, " and I wanted to just sit in a cockpit again. Then I got a little curious and looked around."

Wolf regarded her silently for a while, before speaking again, "So, What'd ya' think"

"What?"

"You were snoopin' on my new fighter. It's the replacement for our current fighters. She's bigger, faster, and packs one hell of a punch."

"It certainly looks impressive," she recalled the large and very violent looking space craft, with its gleaming, sword-like wings.

Wolf stared at her for a bit before speaking his mind, "What did you hope to accomplish by starting a fight with me in my own base?"

"I hoped to prove that I'm not a spy and that I really want to fly for Star Wolf." She hoped that he could sense her honesty.

Wolf considered her answer, "Well, that was accomplished, taking me on like that, you must have a death wish." He laughed a little, but stopped due to the pain of his injuries. "The next test for you was gonna' be hand-to-hand and close quarters combat, but I think we can skip that given the circumstances."

She laughed ,"Yeah, I'd hate to have to kick your ass again."

"Watch yourself, Krystal," he responded, a smirk on his muzzle.

_Wait, that's the first time he's used my name and not just called me girl or something, that has to be a good sign._

"So, what's your story anyway?" Wolf asked as he leaned up against the wall behind his cot.

"Hmm?" she wasn't entirely sure what he meant.

"Ya' know, I was born on Macbeth, shitty family, drunk dad, then dad died and mom whored herself out for booze money. I found my dad's old star fighter and preyed on the area around Macbeth for a while. I met Leon and we got hired by Andross and fought in the Lylat war. Then I went into business for myself and here I am. That's me in a bottle, so what about you?"

"Well, I was born on Cerinia to the ruling family of my tribe, we lived a tribal and primitive lifestyle out of choice on Cerinia. Eventually, some scientist came in a ship and set up a sort of camp near our village. He said he was doing testing and every day he would give us something in exchange for some of us going to his camp. When they came back, they wouldn't really say what had happened. After about a month, he came with a large chest of precious stones and requested that I be included in his tests. My parents agreed as long as he didn't harm me and he took me to his camp. There he took some blood samples and hooked me up to machines before leaving. Something inside me just told me to run and I did. As I ran I overheard the scientist talking about testing a new weapon that he hoped would wipe all life off of the surface. I knew that it was impossible to do anything to stop him so I ran to the hangers where they kept their ships. A pilot tried to stop me and, as I grabbed him to defend myself, I suddenly knew how to operate the ships, like I had absorbed his memory or something. I don't really know, I never learned the full extent of my people's power. As I flew away from Cerinia, a large ship in orbit fired a beam at the planet that burned the surface away. I used the computer in the ship to get myself here to the Lylat system and I set out trying to find out something about the murderous scientist. It wasn't long before I heard a distress call from another planet. I headed down and the scientist was there too, he trapped me, Fox rescued me and fixed the planet. Then you pretty much know the rest. So that's me in a bottle, although my bottle seems to be bigger than yours." Krystal tried to stay somewhat upbeat as she recalled her past but she started feeling the tugging strings of sadness.

Wolf grunted next to her and seemed to be slightly uncomfortable after she recounted her past. He leaned away from her and was rummaging through a pile of his stuff that was next to his bed. As he turned his back to her, she noticed that Wolf had a tattoo. It was the same wolf's-head emblem that was painted on the Star Wolf hanger door, although this smaller version was on his right shoulder blade. The permanently dyed fur was red against its grey fur background. Wolf pulled himself back up onto the cot and held a brown, wood box in his claws. Opening it, he pulled one of his personal cigars out and set work, cutting and lighting it. Wolf sat back and puffed on the cigar, letting the smoke roll out of his mouth, between his sharp teeth.

"Well," he stated, lifting the smoking cigar in the air, "here's to our great lives, oh how easy they've been and how fortunate we are for our luck." Wolf's sarcasm levels increased heavily as he spoke.

The smell of the burning tobacco took Krystal's mind back to the smoking ceremony at harvest time back on Cerinia.

The door opened and the voice of the doctor brought her back to the present. "Commander, what have I said about smoking in the med bay?" The doctor was looking disapprovingly at Wolf.

Wolf stabbed the cigar at her, "Sydney, when did you start makin' any of the rules around here?" the statement was obviously made in jest and the doctor, whose name was apparently Sydney, just rolled her eyes before spotting her data-pad on the table in-between the two patients.

"Oh, that's where I left that thing," She grabbed the pad and dropped it into one of the large pockets on her coat. "How are you two feeling?"

"I'm fine, thanks," she responded.

"Yeah, we're fuckin' great, doc. Hey can you grab my holo-pad, it's on the dresser in my room. I'm bored as hell in here." Wolf was obviously not a person who enjoyed sitting in a bed for days on end.

"Already got it, here," Sydney handed the black device to Wolf and set a box on the table where her data-pad once sat. "Those are donuts, from Panther for you guys, it's just a little after breakfast now." Sydney turned and left the med bay again.

Krystal was famished and grabbed one of the donuts out of the box. Munching on the pastry she gained enough courage to ask about the emblem that she had only seen twice before, "What's with the tattoo, I saw it on the hanger door too."

Wolf stubbed the cigar out on the table and sighed. He seemed to think for a while before finally talking, "It's called the mark if the wolf. It used to be the symbol for my ancestor's clan, a fucking long time ago. I've commandeered it for my own use. "

Krystal wasn't sure what to make of it, "So, what's it for?"

"My business, Star Wolf, goes far beyond just flying fighters for whoever needs them. Everyone knows that my organization oversees weapons trafficking and organized hits and assassinations. The hard part is proving it. I don't handle those areas personally and Star Wolf is like a giant, illegal, company. The people with this mark have a vested interest in the future, activities, and operations of Star Wolf as a whole. If we go under, these people lose everything. So people who have enough clout in the organization get one of these and we serve as a sort of board for Star Wolf. All of the people are extremely loyal to me, and I to them."

Krystal was starting to see the actual extent of the influence of the man in the next bed, she didn't fully understand it, but then, she assumed that that was sort of the point, no one but the tattooed members of Wolf's inner circle fully understood it.

"So, how many people have one?" The whole system intrigued her.

"Twelve, including me," Wolf responded ,"You've met some of them already, and you'll meet more as time goes on."

That seemed to be the limit of what Wolf was willing to share on the subject so she let it drop as they both sat in silence. Krystal decided to start the conversation regarding her near future here at the base, "So, since you said we're skipping CQC testing, what's next after we get out of here?"

Wolf considered the question, "Well, I guess it would be flight orientation and a test in the Wolfen."

She couldn't have been happier, knowing that she'd get to fly again soon.

Wolf grabbed his holo-pad and tapped at the screen with his long claws. Eventually he handed the palm-sized device to her.

"Here, watch that, I'm gonna get some more sleep." With that the wolf rolled over and lay silently.

Krystal hit play on the file that Wolf had left up. A voice that she didn't recognize began narrating a video that played.

"The Wolfen Mark I was the original star craft used by the mercenary flight group, Star Wolf. It was designed by the top spacecraft bureau of the Venomian military-industrial complex. The Wolfen was designed as a direct foil to the Arwing that was popular with the freelance pilots associated with the Cornerian military, it was a sleek fighter that was faster and more maneuverable than the Arwing due to its forward-swept wing layout and vectored thrust nozzles. It did, however, sacrifice power in its shields for more speed. The Wolfen passed trials and was issued to several freelance groups hired by Andross in the Lylat wars. The best known users were the Star Wolf team, led by Wolf O'Donnell. The Star Wolf team utilized the Wolfen well, having well over 500 kills confirmed between the four members and many more assumed, but not official."

Krystal realized that this must have been some sort of documentary on the Wolfen. The movie continued, "After the Lylat wars, the Star Wolf team left the service of the now defunct Venomian government. They also are suspected to be behind the sudden disappearance of the man responsible for the Wolfen's design, Sergei Orlov. Orlov was the head of the fighter division of the bureau that produced the Wolfen and would have been a valuable asset to anyone hoping to continue the Wolfen line."

A picture of Orlov showed a black eagle who looked as if he walked around with a generally negative attitude most the time.

"Sergei Orlov vanished from his design bureau the night after the end of the Lylat wars and it seems that the Star Wolf team grabbed him to help build new Wolfen fighters. Reports from the Star Fox team claim that, during their raid on the Venomian Capitol, Star Wolf engaged them in a new version of the Wolfen that was far more advanced than any personal ship built previously. Evidence of the described Wolfen was never found however, and it is generally considered that the ships described were simply modified Wolfen I's. Less than two years after the Lylat Wars, Star Wolf pilots were spotted flying a new Wolfen variant. It was faster, sleeker, and meaner than its predecessor. They were classified as Wolfen Mark II by the Cornerian Army and reports of their action suggested that they were an overall improvement on the original. This prompted the Cornerians to modernize the Arwing, giving it more powerful engines and weapons."

The video was now showing footage of a dogfight between a group of Wolfens and a group of Arwings, given that there were four of each, she assumed that this was a rare video of a Star Fox on Star Wolf dogfight. "Somewhere in-between four and eight years after the Lylat war, Star Wolf adopted an entirely new Wolfen, designated Wolfen Mark III. The design was then modified by the members of the team to suit their own personal tastes. Little more is known about this new design although one can be assured that this group is even more deadly and will eventually be eclipsed by a new line of even more effective fighters."

The holographic display cut to a 3D display of the Wolfen Mark III, and a tutorial ran through the specs, parts, systems, and controls of the fighter. Once she felt that the recording had taught her all it could, she set Wolf's holo-pad aside and fell asleep.

The remainder of the rest period followed in a similar, slow manner. They'd sleep whenever, they talked about random things or they played chess, Wolf was surprisingly good at it. After what might as well have been a month in the blank, white room, Sydney stopped by and released them.

"You both check out fine, you might have some lingering pain, but generally you can't hurt yourselves more by just doing things, and let's try and avoid this in the future ok? Oh, and hit the showers, you two stink." Sydney dropped a change of clothes for both of them, so that they could get to the top floor in some actual clothes.

"Yeah, thanks mom," Wolf mocked as he sat up and got off of his cot.

He turned his back to Krystal so that she could feel free to change too, so she took the opportunity to slip out of the smelly hospital gown and put on the army issue pants and shirt that were on her cot, "Why do you have so much of this stuff?"

"What stuff?" Wolf inquired.

"All of this Venomian army surplus," She clarified, "It's everywhere around here."

Wolf just shrugged as he put his shirt on, he was wearing a similar set of clothes, "It's cheap, and a lot of the guys around here are ex-Venomian military. Mainly though, it's cheap and you can buy it in bulk."

They reached the top floor of the base soon after leaving the med bay.

"You can shower first," Wolf offered. Sargasso base had been built with only one officer's locker room. It had an open room with several shower heads as well as a row of lockers next to some sinks and mirrors. The idea of males and females both using the facilities had been, up to this point, been a non-issue. "Panther and Leon would have finished a while ago and they're probably down in the hangers."

"Well don't hold off on my account, clothing was pretty much optional in a majority of my past, so I'm not exactly the most modest of people." She really didn't understand the people of the Lylat system's obsession with clothes and the taboo view of nudity. Given their obsession with sex, it was a strange hypocrisy.

"Optional clothing, huh?" Wolf smirked, "I always knew that McCloud was up to some weird shit on that ship of his."

She couldn't help but laugh as they entered the officer's facilities. She had to give Wolf credit though, even though they were showering just feet from each other, he kept his cool. Most guys in this situation would either be incredibly uncomfortable or trying to ogle her body like mad. Wolf didn't even seem to notice. _Well, might as well try and mess with him a little._

"You know, you say the most flattering things when you start thinking I'm a spy," she prodded.

"Hmm?" was the only response she heard from him.

"Well, on my first night here, you referred to me with the phrase 'a package like that' and in the hanger I believe that you called me pretty. Do you find me pretty, Wolf?"

Wolf was unshakable, "Well, you sure as hell aint ugly."

She gave up on trying to get some sort of rise out of the wolf as she grabbed the shampoo bottle and started to clean her mangy fur. "How the hell do you get this dirty by laying in a hospital bed for four days?"

She heard Wolf shut his shower off, "It's one of life's many great mysteries."

She finished cleaning her somehow very dirty fur and shut her own shower off, grabbed a towel and exited the shower room while wrapping the towel around her body. She found her locker and grabbed a flight suit out of it. After changing, she headed towards the exit. Wolf was at one of the mirrors in his flight gear and running his hand through his mohawk.

"You're not getting any prettier," she stated with a smirk as she walked up behind him.

"Yeah, I think I maxed out a while ago," he retorted

"Yeah, right." She said with laugh. Wolf had gotten a lot more agreeable since their time in the hospital.

She watched as he grabbed his advanced eye patch and pinched a small cable between his claws. He carefully brought the device towards his eye socket and plugged it in to the small port at the back of the hole. He strapped the device around his head and turned back towards her, "Ya ready to learn how to fly a Wolfen?"

"Yes, sir." She could barely contain her excitement as the thought of flying again got her heart pumping.

"Well alright, let's go," Wolf turned and walked out of the bathroom with Krystal hot on his heels.

Wolf proceeded to provide insight on the Wolfen as they made their way to the hanger, "Now the Wolfen's cockpit is very similar to an Arwing's. The seat is different and the button for secondary weapons is on top of the flight stick, covered by a small red cover to prevent accidental firing, just flip it up and click. Performance wise, the Wolfen is much faster overall and accelerates almost one and a half times as fast as an Arwing, so watch out when you punch it. You'll use Andrew's Wolfen for now, as the other ships in that hanger are incomplete or relics. Just whatever you do, don't crash it. They're expensive and it wouldn't be worth it to replace the thing as we're switching to the new model in less than a month."

They soon arrived at the familiar doors, emblazoned with the wolf's-head mark. Wolf opened the doors and walked into the large bay, the lights were already on in the hanger. Wolf strolled off towards the tarped-off area of the hanger that held the prototype Wolfen. Krystal hesitated to follow Wolf before he looked back at her and jerked his head, signaling her to follow. Reaching the room, Wolf pulled the tarp back and stepped in, she followed him closely.

The large fighter now appeared much more complete and now the only obvious thing that was missing was its armament. A figure stepped out from behind the ship and she recognized the man from the documentary. He was the black eagle named Sergei, the designer of the Wolfen.

The eagle scrutinized her and itched his beaked face with one of his long, feathery fingers. "Who is she?"

"She's a potential new pilot, we're down here for some training. How's it comin'?" Wolf stepped over to the massive fighter.

"Your decision to make it this large was a good one, she has far more ability than all of the previous models combined. Her engines are the most powerful ever mounted on a fighter, I had them custom made for this prototype."Sergei was obviously very proud of this ship, " She's almost done, all that needs to be finished is the weapon installation and the fire control system needs to be installed. Other than that, she's good to go."

"That's good, cause I'm taking her out." Wolf rubbed his paw along the flat black paint of the fighters fuselage.

"Is that the best idea?" Sergei inquired "This is the only one, and If you break it or something goes wrong, that's a year of work right out the airlock!"

"It's fine, Orlov," Wolf assured him, "I'll go easy on her. Besides, if she has flaws, we want to find them before we get more made. Now get this thing on a catapult and ready for takeoff."

Wolf motioned for Krystal to follow him as he led her towards the parked fighters of the Star Wolf team, where a fourth Wolfen now sat among them. She climbed the rolling staircase and sat, once again, in the cockpit of Andrew's Wolfen. Wolf crawled up after she got in the cockpit and ran over the Wolfen's controls once again.

"Now," he started before watching the overhead crane set his new Wolfen on the last remaining magnetic launch catapult, "When you have the cockpit sealed, give the controller in the booth up there a thumbs up. Then wait for the doors to open fully before hitting 'launch' on the screen here. I'll follow you out, but be careful, we're in an asteroid field here. Shoot out and head straight, avoiding the asteroids until you clear the field, hover out there 'till I meet up with you."

"Got it," she confirmed, her mind focused.

Wolf patted the side of the ship before climbing down and pulling the stairs away from the ship. Krystal watched him walk over to the prototype before she pulled the flight harness over her shoulders and latched it in. Checking all of the systems on the screen, she hit the button to seal the cockpit. Making sure everything was in order in the new ship, she gave the launch controller a thumbs up.

The controller looked down from his glass booth above the massive airlock doors and nodded, confirming her 'good to go' signal. He turned and watched Wolf's fighter before nodding again and sitting back in his chair. The lights faded and several red warning lights began flashing around the hanger. She could barely hear the klaxons blaring in the hanger through the thick cockpit. Before her, the two massive doors began slowly spreading apart, revealing the black, asteroid populated void beyond. The doors finished their journey sideways and she took a deep breath, settling her nerves.

She held her paw out, and satisfied that it wasn't shaking, she pressed the flashing 'launch' button on the fighters display. She heard the engine of the Wolfen whine to life before she was slammed back into her seat as the magnetic catapult hurled the fighter into the asteroid field.

She pushed the stick hard down, diving below a large asteroid and pulling up to avoid another that was right behind it. _Man, Wolf wasn't kidding. This place is packed with rocks. _The Wolfen's high maneuverability allowed her to easily weave through the thick field of rocks before abruptly clearing the edge of the field. She turned the ship around and pulled the throttle back into its hover setting. The ship reversed until it had stopped and sat, silent in the void. She sat, watching the tumbling asteroids for any sign of Wolf.

Suddenly, a streak shot out of the field, going faster than any starfighter she had ever seen. The prototype Wolfen shot past her fighter as Wolf's voice came on over the comm. "Woooo, this thing is great! I'll be right back, I want to see how fast she can go."

Krystal turned her head to see the already speedy fighter accelerate and shoot off into space, leaving its signature green streak behind. Before long, she could see the fighter returning at a more reasonable pace.

"That's gotta be close to the speed record for a personal fighter." Wolf was more excited than she had ever seen him. "Alright, let's get down to business. I'm going to fly through the asteroid field, follow me to the other side, and keep close."

Wolf's fighter shot forward, into the field of space debris. Krystal felt her heart pounding as she pushed the throttle lever forward, her fighter streaking after the green plasma trail left by the Wolfen's engines. She silently thanked Orlov for his choice of engines as she fought to keep up with Wolf's superior fighter, often only trying to follow the rapidly dissipating green streak. After several minutes of follow the leader in the asteroid field, the two fighters shot out into open space once again. Wolf slowed his fighter, and she pulled up alongside it as they slowed to a stop.

"Ya did good, real good." Wolf was grinning, but about what, she wasn't sure. There were probably a lot of things making him a happy man right now, "Alright, the trigger on the flight stick fires the dual lasers on that thing. Your goal is to hit me with 'em. Try and knock my shields down to 50%, but we'll stay out of the asteroids, I wouldn't want ya to get hurt." Wolf laughed as his fighter shot forward.

Krystal reacted quickly and shot after him, activating the gun sights on the heads-up display. Wolf was keeping his Wolfen to a lower speed and she began to close within firing distance on his fighter. She edged closer and pulled the trigger, watching as Wolf's fighter shot vertically, avoiding the laser burst. Before she could even react, he had looped around and positioned himself behind her, "Bang, bang, bang!" He called over the comm.

She slammed the throttle to full brake and Wolf's fighter shot overhead, she quickly accelerated and fired a shot from the double lasers into his ship. She watched in dismay as the shields dropped from 100% to 95%. _This is going to take a while. _

Wolf didn't take kindly to the shot on his ship and banked hard left, Krystal struggled to match the prototype, which was definitely proving its worth out here. She managed to get him in her sights just long enough for him to pull a tight Immelmann turn over head as he shot like a rocket in the opposite direction. She matched the Wolf's move, though slower, so now she was a good distance behind him again. He pulled another tight Immelmann and was headed back towards her in a deadly game of space chicken.

She held down the firing trigger, charging the twin lasers. They hit full charge as the distance closed to a narrow 50 miles. She released the trigger and the two balls of energy hurtled towards Wolf. He barrel rolled at the last minute, negating the laser burst altogether. She tried to dive away from the oncoming collision, but Wolf matched her, grazing her fighter with the wing of his. Their shields cracked as the two energy fields met and repelled each other like similar magnets. She looked down at her display and her stomach dropped. Her shields had dropped from 100% to 75% from the impact, Wolf's however had dropped a measly 6% to 89%. _Wow, he's going to kill me without any weapons._

Wolf's laughter broke out over the comm. "C'mon, Krystal, I thought you wanted to fly fighters, not do your best dead whale impression." She could see his fighter making a turn to come at her again. _The odds are against you again, he's the better pilot and his ship is better, but you can take it to him again, exploit his aggressiveness. _

The two fighters streaked through space on another collision course. Krystal charged the lasers again, but released them outside of their lock-on range. Wolf would still have to avoid it though, as it flew straight. As she hoped, Wolf started to barrel roll, keeping his Wolfen on a collision course with hers. She began pulling the trigger on the laser cannons as Wolf exited his barrel roll, scoring several hits on his shields. She faked a dive and pulled up hard into a loop. Wolf fell for it as he attempted to dive and intercept her. She pulled out of her loop behind the Wolfen prototype and loosed several more shots into the shields before Wolf could pull up and get out of her line of fire. His shields read 64%.

She pulled up and looked for his fighter, but it was nowhere to be seen. She leveled off and looked around her for the bright green streak, but saw nothing but empty void. Her radar seemed equally stumped as it showed no contacts.

"Lookin' for something?" Wolf's voiced mocked her.

"Yeah, a wolf who ran off scared, seen him?" She shot back

Her ship rocked as her shields flared. She looked down, over the edge of her fighter and saw that Wolf had been sitting beneath her the whole time. He pulled up on the stick and ground their shields against each other. She hit the brakes and fired two bursts into Wolf's ship. Her shields read 54%. Wolf's read 49%.

Wolf's laugh came on over the comm., accompanied by a video feed of his head, "Well wasn't that a hoot. I'll tell ya, I'm really happy with this ship. You did alright, but if this thing was armed, you'd be very dead already. I'm headin' in. You do whatever, fly around a bit more, get the feel of it. The base is marked on your map, when you go to land, radio the controller and he'll open the doors for ya." Wolf's fighter turned and shot off towards the Sargasso base.

She sat in silence for a while, content to just relax and enjoy the ultimate quite of the vacuum. She thought back on her life to this point, somehow going from a princess on a planet that willingly chose a simple lifestyle over one filled with technology, to a potential member of the systems most feared mercenary group. She was born in a tent made of animal skin and now sat in multi-million credit war machine. She contemplated if she was really willing to immerse herself in the Star Wolf lifestyle. One could definitely not go half in with these guys. The killing and less than moral jobs came with the business. She had technically done plenty with Star Fox, but at least Corneria had some tangible moral obligations. If some crime lord hired Star Wolf to blitzkrieg a competitor's ship, it'd be kill or be killed, or if they were hired to kidnap and extort, that's what they'd do, because that's how they made their living. Morality wasn't something that Wolf seemed to worry about. Was he evil because of it, no not really, evil is a point of view, his men see him as a hero, an icon equal to the Cornerian's view of Fox or even James McCloud. Beauty and evil are in the eye of the beholder and the winner writes history.

She sat and gazed at the ever shifting jumble of asteroids that made up Meteo, the bones of a dead planet. For all the bad that Star Wolf had done, she realized that they did their own style of good as well. Wolf gave a home and work to remnants of the Venomian Army, men and women who had fought for a cause that they believed in and would be punished for it in public. Politicians changed their views, and today's enemies are tomorrow's allies. Governments changed and while Star Fox might be doing humanitarian work one day, after a power shift, they might be putting down opposing political parties the next. She realized that Star Wolf represented a sort of constant in the system, they acted independent of the government, under the helm of a man who made his own decisions and had his own idea for how the galaxy should work. Star Wolf didn't care is it was popular or not, they were in it for themselves. Governments were worthless anyway, they had needed people like Star Fox and Star Wolf for the past three system wide threats.

She sat in quiet for a time before deciding that she could get behind Star Wolf. _I can do this, I can handle the Star Wolf life, all of it._

A ping from her comm. snapped her attention back to the now. It was a coded transmission and her display was requesting a confirmation to accept it. She pressed accept on the screen and the deep voice of Sargasso's AI controller came on.

"Commander O'Donnell wishes it to be known that you are not to stay out here all night in his ship, dinner for the Star Wolf team will be served shortly," REX informed her.

She looked down at the time display on the screen, _jeez, Wolf headed back to Sargasso over an hour and a half ago, I must have really zoned out._

"Thanks for the heads up, REX." She thanked the AI as she punched the throttle and shot back towards the marker heading on her radar indicating the base. She pinged the controller and gently eased the fighter into the hanger, touching down near where the ship had been parked when she first snuck into the hanger.

She made her way to the Star Wolf elevator and waited for it to descend, she found out that you didn't need to call the elevator, REX simply recognized you and sent the elevator down for you. The doors dinged open and Sergei stepped out, regarding her with a nod, he continued on his way. She assumed that he had been talking with Wolf about the performance of the new Wolfen. Mr. Orlov struck her as someone who took serious pride in his work, a warrior at heart whose contributions to war came in the form of well designed fighter spacecraft. She stepped inside the waiting elevator and rode it to the top floor of the base.

Dinner here at the base seemed to carry a more formal weight to it than breakfast or lunch. Whereas breakfast was a time when they all sat and Wolf briefed everyone on the goings on and things that needed doing and lunch was a haphazard free for all where you ate if you were around and got back to whatever you were doing, dinner was a generally quiet event with a large amount of good food. If you talked at the dinner table, it was usually about daily accomplishments or things that weren't work related. It was a time to wind down from the day, and also apparently a time for Leon and Panther to argue about something pointless in the end.

She stepped into the lounge and heard Panther and Leon doing just that.

"Wow, that's probably the stupidest thing you could do." Leon stated flatly

"No, that's how you're supposed to do it, only wierdos don't do it." Panther retorted

"So I'm weird because I eat cookies whole?"

"Yup, you're supposed to separate it, eat the middle part, and then just eat the other parts."

"No, that's weird," Leon was not convinced, "They're not even that great whole, I'd imagine that the parts would be pretty sub-par on their own."

Panther glared at the chameleon before turning to her, "Krystal, does one just eat oreo's or does one divide and conquer, enjoying three times as many parts."

She shrugged, "I usually separate them, I guess."

Panther smiled and turned back to Leon, but Leon turned to Wolf who had been sitting quietly, obviously trying to ignore the squabbling pilots, "Wolf, what about you?"

"I just eat the fuckin' things," he growled back, "Now shut up and eat."

She slipped into a chair and surveyed the vast spread of food laid out on the table. She grabbed some of everything, growing up in the Cerinian village had left her with a wide horizon when it came to food, there was rarely something that she didn't at least find acceptable.

Wolf and Leon ate quickly and excused themselves. Wolf muttered something about the Wolfen and Leon was silent. That left just her and Panther still eating dinner.

"So, what's the commander got planned for you tomorrow?" The black cat inquired, not looking up from his plate as he ate.

She was sincerely grateful for Panther, he was actually a genuine help when it came to dealing with Leon and Wolf. "I don't know, Wolf hasn't told me anything."

Panther sat quietly, apparently thinking to himself. After a few minutes he spoke, "Wolf's got something planned for tomorrow, he always has a plan, usually he has weeks planned well in advance. If he hasn't told you what to do tomorrow, he wants to spring something on you."

"Like what?" She inquired.

"I don't know," he finished his food and sat back in his chair, "He hasn't said anything to me, granted your whole recruitment has been a little... off."

"What do you mean?"

"Well I was accepted into Star Wolf in under a day, granted Wolf was down to only himself and Leon. Plus he would have given his right nut to steal a member of Star Fox away. Something about you makes him cautious, and my guess is that whatever he has up his sleeve for tomorrow, it'll be a test to prove your commitment."

"So what should I do?"

"Nothing you can do," Panther assured her, "Just get a good night's sleep, don't let it bother you, and be prepared to deal with it when it comes." With that advice, Panther got up and left the lounge to attend to his own matters for the night.

She finished her food and found that she was surprisingly tired. _How can you be tired after doing nothing but sitting and sleeping for four days?_

Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you looked at it, she was already in her bedroom as she still slept in the lounge for now. She crossed the room and plopped down on the couch that faced the holo-screen on the wall.

She didn't even have time to think about what Wolf had planned for tomorrow before she was fast asleep.

* * *

There ya go, sorry it took so long for those of you who have been waiting.

On a related note, someone reviewed. yay for you, you're the best. If you want to also be the best, although not as best as the first review is in fact, best, then review! Review untill your fingers bleed and you can't operate your slick keys. Right now the only comfort I have is one review and the mentality that this isn't bad enough for you to negatively review.

Anyway... bye!


	7. Eye for an eye

Yup, another short one from Wolf's sick brain. Pretty much picks up an hour or two after Krystal went to sleep.

* * *

Wolf's fists smashed down in a rhythmic tempo, one steady wet smack after another. Rage consumed all that he was, ration and mercy had long since been abandoned. He didn't yell or swear, all of his energy, all of his being was focused on the brutal beating. He knew that his younger siblings were watching in horror, worried, but too afraid of him to do anything about it.

His mothers swollen eyes stared blankly back at him, he didn't know if she was already dead and he didn't much care. Her fur was matted with blood that streamed from every one of her facial orifices. His fists and claws had opened the skin in more places than one could count and his own blood rained down in a steady stream from his slashed eyeball.

His fists continued to fall, the once white carpet had been stained a vivid red in a circle around her head. She had stopped fighting back a long time ago, it seemed like hours, but was more likely little more than a minute. His heart pounded in his ears, the adrenaline kept the immense pain in his destroyed eye down to a manageable level. Regardless of the fact that he was just 15, he had managed to easily overpower his intoxicated mother.

He spotted a long shard of glass a few feet away on the floor, its tip stained red. It was the same piece of glass that had just permanently blinded him. He knew what he had to do, _an eye for an eye._ He reached for the shard.

A strong grip on his arm jolted his brain. His mothers broken face disappeared and was replaced by a large canvas sack hanging from the ceiling. It swayed away from him and made its way back in its pendulum path. Blood slowly dripped from the soaked bottom and left a red line indicating the path that the bag had travelled.

He whipped his head around to see who held his arm back from striking the sack again. The black and white masked face of a husky looked at him with a dead-pan expression. Wolf recognized him as sergeant Goi, the former field medic who made his living providing basic medical care to the general troops and pirates here at the Sargasso base. Goi cocked an eyebrow at him and released Wolf's arm.

Wolf turned back to the sack as two soldiers unzipped the side and a very bloodied rat tumbled unceremoniously out, sprawling out on the mat with a groan. The two men grabbed the rat under the armpits and dragged him out of the room. Goi shot a last look at Wolf before following the others out, leaving Wolf alone in the small empty room.

Wolf slumped down against the wall and stared at the empty, blood soaked sack that hung from the ceiling. He didn't know why he had just beat the rat within an inch of his life. There was most likely a reason, this was the usual punishment for more serious rule violations by the general staff. He couldn't just fire them, they knew too much, so he had to beat obedience into the thicker ones. They appreciated his mercy, as a blaster bolt to the forehead would also solve the problem.

The fact that he couldn't remember what the man had done to warrant the punishment was unsettling. If he didn't have a reason for it, then it was just violence for the sake of violence. Even the most uncivilized predator had a reason for its violence. Without a purpose, violence was unnatural.

Even more unsettling was the fact that he slipped into some sort of delusion. He looked down at his palms, his claws had punctured them, leaving eight small holes. He closed his eyes and saw his mother's broken face staring back at him, her eyes clouded and dead. He knew the rest, after all, he wrote that chapter in his life. She hadn't been the first person he'd killed, but she was still the one he was most glad that he did.

A growing migraine forced him to get up and go in search for something to calm himself down. Walking towards the private elevator in the back of the base, he couldn't help but think about the mission that he had already lined up for tomorrow. He didn't like the idea of keeping it in the dark from Panther and Leon, Leon especially. Leon was the co-founder of Star Wolf and his wing mate, but he had to spring this whole thing on Krystal. It wouldn't tell him much if she had a day to prepare for it, plus he was pretty sure that Panther was helping her out.

The mission wasn't even a good idea honestly, there were far too many unknowns and maybes involved, but the cargo involved was too important to ignore. It would either be a good test of her abilities, a bad one, or one or more of them could be killed when something went wrong. Hell, that was the fun part, life or death stakes made things interesting, deep-down its why most people flew fighters and got themselves into gun fights. Something about proving that you were the better man when you gambled your life against someone else's was hardwired into all intelligent beings. He would bet that that was what drove Krystal somewhat, and it was that that he was counting on for the operation tomorrow.

He noticed that every time he entered a new section of the base, the lights turned down to half of their output and were much easier on his aching head. REX was truly a godsend when it came to operating complex structures like the base. He could control every automated feature of the base simultaneously, a task that would require upwards of fifty people. The animosity he had felt for the AI in the past had long faded and he was truly grateful for his unwavering help. He turned the corner and found the private elevator sitting open, waiting and ready for him.

"Must be slow around here if you can focus on me, REX" Wolf said out loud, knowing that REX could hear him.

"It is one-fifteen in the morning, Venomian Standard Time, commander. Most base personnel are sleeping, so yes, it is slow around here," came the dry response.

"Yeah, yeah. Thanks." Wolf acknowledged the AI's consideration as he rode the elevator to the top floor of the base. The lights on the top floor were off completely so he waited until his eyes adjusted to the darkness before continuing on. He used to walk around here blind, but Panther had a habit of sleep walking and he didn't want to run into the black furred feline.

He walked silently to the automatic lounge door and waited for it slide open. He walked straight for the fridge and peered inside, grimacing at the harsh, white light. _Fuckin' great,_ was his only thought as he stared at the whole two selections of drinks that filled the fridge. Two years ago, he would have grabbed a liter of Vodka and drank until he passed out. That was generally the way he solved most of his problems then, but now he was on his third liver and decided that **Wolf O'Donnell dead from liver failure** would be a stupid headline for the evening news. Therefore, there was now no alcohol on this space station, a decision he regretted at times like this.

He grabbed a bottle of water and found a bottle of pain killers on top of the fridge. Turning the bottle over, he read the label, **Extra strength- take 2 every 12 hours. **

_Well, fuck that, _he concluded as a he popped what looked to be five into his mouth before washing them down. He sat in one of the lounge chairs and turned it to face the window that looked out over the churning asteroid field. As he watched the chunks roll silently, he couldn't help but think about what the end game for him was. He ran a criminal empire, the likes of which the system had never seen, he flew fighters, killed people, and earned more money that some of the planets in the Lylat system. That was the now, but when and where did he call it quits? What was the end that required these means.

That question bothered him because he didn't have an answer for it, not one. He felt like a dog of war, destined for nothing but fighting, and honestly, the only way he could see it ending was a going down in combat. He lived violently so it seemed fitting that he would eventually die violently. Not that that really bothered him, he didn't really want to live long enough for someone else to have to wipe his own ass for him. _Still, it'd be nice to actually get out of the business one day and not have to deal with all of this shit, just relax._

His gaze fell on the sleeping form on the lounge couch. He'd forgotten that he had never had Andrew's old room cleaned out after their stay in the medical ward. He had to admit, she had really surprised him. They had seen her in combat before, when they fought both against and with Star Fox. She had taken over Peppy's slot in the lineup, but she seemed mediocre at best, maybe slightly better than Slippy. She had improved since he had seen her last.

From what she had told him earlier, her life had been just about as fucked up as his. Actually, when you thought about it, Slippy was the only person in the Star Fox or Star Wolf lineups that wouldn't need a good looking at by a psych counselor. Between the two groups, their pasts were fucked up enough for a whole generation of Cornerian wrist cutters.

He wanted to go back to his room and sleep, get some rest for the job tomorrow. He just wasn't tired, the incident in the supply room had screwed his body up again and he assumed he wouldn't sleep again for a while. He grabbed a set of ear buds and plugged them into his portable data pad, turning away from Krystal so the light wouldn't wake her up.

He turned it to its TV setting and tuned into the news for a while.

"The story of the day is the Cornerian Supreme Court's decision on the case of Andropov v. The Cornerian Times. As you know, most Venomian citizens were encourage to throw off their 'Cornerian' names and take new 'Venomian' names from a set of names that are believed to have ancient roots and have been out of use for several centuries. Mr. Andropov is an outspoken civil rights activist and changed his name at the outbreak of the Lylat Wars to show his support for oppressed peoples. Andropov's employer, The Cornerian Times newsprint, fired Mr. Andropov after he refused to change his name back after the end of Lylat Wars." The news reporter informed the viewers, "the decision sets precedent, making all discrimination based on name alone, illegal. Mr. Andropov questioned how now, one can discriminate legally based on ancestral origin but not name choice."

The ticker at the bottom of the small kicked out news blurbs that weren't important enough for main airtime. One caught Wolf's eye, **Admiral of the Fleet Peppy Hare commissions navy's newest carrier as Dawn's Glory. Glory expected to enter frontline service within the year.**

_Admiral of the Fleet Peppy Hare, since when? It's about time that the old man finally got out of the business. Plus that means that Fox is down to three pilots left. _

The fact that his group now outnumbered Star Fox put a grin on Wolf's face. _Well, no point in sitting around all night, might as well go get shit ready for the mission. _

* * *

If you didn't catch on yet, the people running around with Slavic, mostly Russian, names had them changed during the Lylat Wars and are Venomian. It helps differentiate people and their backgrounds.

Oh yeah, and don't be like Wolf, follow the dosage directions on those meds people!

Still sick of you not reviewing, 'cept you cool guy who already reviewed twice. Srsly, this chapter is 2,001 words, and took me about 3-4 hours total. A ten word review isn't that much to ask for, is it?


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